The Schlei is the family’s sailing ground and the setting of a sharp reversal: the father pursues a sailing dream there, but repeated mishaps expose the gap between his ambitions and his ability on the water. The bay first provides outings shared with the narrator, then becomes the place where the father accidentally knocks his son overboard and must be rescued himself.

A proving ground

Two months after the parents began pursuing sailing, they took their practical exam on the Schlei in a strong wind. The father had excelled in theory, finishing without a single error, while the mother also passed despite four mistakes. On the water, however, the wind and the unstable dinghy undid his confidence. He fell during the first maneuver, was struck by the boom as he tried to get up, and hit the boat’s floor again when it rammed a pontoon. While he lay there, the mother brought the boat under control and sailed the remaining maneuvers alone.

The father became sick and vomited into the Schlei. When a gust sent the halyard through his hands and the sail slid down the mast, the mother climbed up to rethread it, then raised the sail, steered back to harbor, and docked competently. Of the eighteen candidates, the father alone failed. The examiner’s explanation was that he had spent most of the practical test lying down; without the mother, the examiners would have had to rescue him. The Schlei thus makes the contrast between his academic success and his helplessness under sail visible in a public, physical ordeal.

Calm-water outings

The failure did not immediately end the father’s attachment to the water. Weeks later, he began going out with the family under the mother’s command. He most enjoyed sailing when there was no wind and no sail needed: the family moved across the mirror-still water with the outboard motor, rested in the sun, ate their provisions, and sometimes fished. The father told the narrator stories during these trips. If he spotted acquaintances from the Rotary Club through his binoculars, he called attention to them and the pair hid in a quiet cove.

These outings offered a gentler version of sailing, one that depended less on the father’s skill with a sail. Their stillness also makes the later accident more striking: the water was calm, but the father’s temper and an unreliable motor turned a relaxed excursion into an emergency.

Accident and rescue

On one trip, the father switched off the outboard in the middle of the Schlei and let the boat drift. When he tried to restart it after about an hour, several pulls on the cord failed. Even opening the motor casing and examining its interior did not help. In frustration, he yanked the cord at an angle and struck the narrator in the face. The blow sent the narrator overboard, bleeding from the nose and disoriented, while the father called for help from the boat.

The father then jumped in after his son, but the boat drifted away after he pushed off from it. Before he could reach the narrator, a nearby couple pulled the narrator from the water. The father swam and paddled to their boat, climbed aboard, and embraced his son so tightly that the narrator coughed; in the moment, it was unclear which of them was comforting the other. The couple also found the family’s drifting boat among the reeds and towed it back. Wrapped in a blanket, the father asked for a cigarette from the rescuer who had lit one, ending four years without smoking.

The end of the sailing dream

At the Schleswiger Schlei-Segel-Club, a crowd greeted the pair. The story that spread among local sailors was that the professor had knocked his son overboard, got into trouble in a windless calm, and needed rescuing—all without a sailing license. On the way home, the father asked the narrator to keep the episode secret for that evening. When the family asked about the blood-soaked cotton in the narrator’s nose, the narrator said he had run into the mast, and the father silently acknowledged the lie.

Afterward, the father never again boarded the JoMaHe Sailing Yacht. The Schlei’s role in the family story therefore changes from a place of shared, carefully limited pleasure to the setting of an accident that ends his sailing passion. The sea does not defeat him through a storm this time: the decisive danger arises in still water, from a failed motor, a sudden blow, and the father’s impulsive attempt to save his son.