My oldest brother once bought a peanut from Norway. He gave it to my father.
The peanut in question wasn’t edible—it was a dinghy. A dinghy built in a repurposed Nobel Dynamite factory in Norway. When the plant shut down, someone had the bright idea to retrain the workers to build sailboats instead of explosives. The result: a rugged, all-wood sailing dinghy with a peculiar rounded bow, a two-part Gunter rig, and a cleverly designed back bench that doubled as a daggerboard keel.
To sail it, you simply dropped the keel in the slot and wedged it down. The bright nylon sail had a yellow peanut stitched about three-quarters of the way up—so you never forgot what kind of boat you were in.
It was a simple setup: no jib, no winches, no spinnaker. The ten-foot mast slotted into the forward seat; the sail tilted upward with its angled upper boom, giving you another five feet of sail area. The lower boom was also wood, and the sail could be reefed in heavier wind by rolling it around that boom.
Tough little boat. Not especially wet for a dinghy—it would rise over waves rather than punching through them—and when heading downwind, it would sometimes surf and pick up incredible speed. I gauged that speed by what I called “vibrations”—the way the centerboard would hum at certain speeds. One vibration, then silence. Two vibrations, then silence. And if you were lucky (and possibly reckless), you’d get to three vibrations—a kind of harmonic resonance that told you the boat was absolutely flying.
I learned to sail on that boat with my dad. He taught me everything he knew—which turned out to be only slightly more than what I already knew. His learning always ran about ten minutes ahead of his teaching.
We never learned to gybe. Probably a good thing. The way that mast was built, a hard gybe could’ve snapped it like a matchstick. So we didn’t try.
One day, in a secluded cove on San Francisco Bay, my dad set me loose on my first solo sail. I was ten years old.
Out on a starboard reach, I heeled the boat over hard—like I was supposed to—but then panicked. I held the main sheet too tightly, kept the boom too close to centerline. The boat rolled further and further until I found myself standing on the inside wall of the hull.
From shore, my dad had a perfect view of the entire bottom of the boat.
Fortunately, before water flooded in, I eased the line. The boom swung out, spilled the wind, and the peanut shot forward like nothing had happened. An hour later I returned to shore, soaked, but silent. Dad didn’t say much. I think we both agreed: the capsize hadn’t really happened.
That boat took me everywhere for the next eight years. Every lake in the Sierra Nevada that had a launch ramp—or even a muddy shore—I sailed it. I learned to read the water, chase wind across glassy surfaces, survive thunderstorms, endure doldrums. I fought the weather, and I learned patience.
Once, I even took the peanut through the Golden Gate, all the way to the beach on the other side. Like I said—tough boat.
Today, Oracle Team USA won the America’s Cup in what may have been the most dramatic series in Cup history. It was amazing to watch.
That little Norwegian peanut set the course.
Ten years after those Sierra lake days, I bought a Cal 20. Sherry and I sailed it for three years, then moved up to a Yankee 30 sloop—thirteen sail bags, and I used every one.
I traded sailing for hiking eventually, and the Bay for the mountains again. But for a long time, I lived in wind, rigging, and tide.
And yes—I finally learned to gybe.
