How We Saved Our Clothes, and Then Got Rescued Ourselves

How We Saved Our Clothes Strong winds in the Canary Islands are nothing unusual. When you live aboard a sailing yacht with children, something is bound to get blown into the sea. It’s fine if it’s only a dress. By the way, it’s better to dive after a runaway dress without wearing one yourself... 🙂 An Incident at the Anchorage It’s almost noon. Nastya and Andrei are topping up the petrol in our dinghy. Jerrycans, hoses, funnels—it’s all here. Clothes hung out to dry after the laundrette flap cheerfully against the sheets. Before setting sail from the Canaries, we washed everything we could. Suddenly (out of nowhere), a squall tears down some of the clothes, pegs and all. Lada only just manages to grab the bows flying all over the cockpit—the ones she and I had been sitting there peacefully mending. Then Nastya suddenly shrieks: “Our clothes, our clothes have blown away!!!” Leaping up, I stare wide-eyed as a duvet cover and a couple of other bits of laundry rapidly sail off towards the shore. Opening the Swimming Season I hesitate by the side... (the family had spent the whole month trying in vain to persuade me to go for at least one swim. But I stood my ground: it was cold!). Meanwhile, another gust of wind knocks Nastya’s favourite skirt into the water. Its owner, almost in tears, drops the hoses and funnels and rushes to the stern. This time, in the battle between my dislike of the cold and my thriftiness, the cold—and my dislike of it—lost. As I prepared to jump, I couldn’t untie the pareo from around my waist (it was tied with two knots), so I leapt into the sea just as I was, a metre away from the frightened skirt. As I plunged into the watery depths, I noted with surprise that the water wasn’t cold at all. At the same time, it occurred to me that while I was surfacing, the clothes were probably sinking. I grabbed the skirt I was after half a metre below the surface, tossed it into the dinghy, and was about to swim after Nastya, who had gone to rescue the duvet cover (bed linen aboard a yacht is strictly accounted for). “Look, there’s something else floating behind Nastya!” Andrei shouted from the stern, keeping half an eye on things to make sure we didn’t bear down on the yacht anchored next to us. Rescuing the Drowning I made for this “something,” periodically trying to free my legs from the pareo winding itself around them. That used up the last of my strength. When I reached the place where the clothes had sunk, I dived down a couple of times with my eyes open but found nothing. I saw my daughter swimming back, dragging the duvet cover behind her, and turned towards the yacht. I swim, unwinding the pareo from my legs. Swim again. Unwind it again. I flounder. And the pareo has my legs in a death grip—afraid of the water, apparently... The captain watches calmly from the stern. “Andrei,” I shout, “I need help!” “What?” “Jump in and come to me!” I say. I didn’t shout “Help!” because I didn’t want to frighten the children. “Jump? In there?” my husband grimaces. “Why?” he asks... ever so politely. “I’m drowning,” I say. Just as politely. Well, then the captain jumped in, slowly and elegantly, and we practised the diving technique of “towing a drowning person on their back with a neck hold.” It worked well. We rinsed off under the icy shower bag (the morning had been overcast, so the water hadn’t warmed up). We drank tea, our teeth chattering against the rims of our mugs. We laughed about how we’d saved the clothes. Then drank more tea. Then laughed some more. The final tally: we saved the duvet cover and the skirt. But now the mermaids are parading around in the captain’s underpants and Nastya’s top. P.S. Clothes washed at the laundrette differ from the same clothes unwashed only in the cloying smell of fabric conditioner. Not a single stain was harmed in the wash. For 5 or 8 euros, the laundrette will get your washing wetter than the most dedicated professional wetter. P.P.S. We agreed to hold swimming practice every day. Whatever the weather. Amen.