Phoebe Ka-Ir Wang

“Are the guys ordering you around a lot?” Someone older asks me while we’re watching the burgers broil on the BBQ at the club.

“Actually, I’m the one who does that,” I reply, after a moment to think. “Get on the low side! This isn’t our start!” I slip into an exaggerated version of myself.

“This is the fifth time I’ve had to tell you!” Chris chimes in, overhearing, and we all laugh.

It’s true, that since joining the crew of Amelia, a Viking 33, last summer, I’ve suddenly discovered a capacity for giving orders. It’s partly because my voice is so quiet that my first few attempts to relay information to the five other guys on the boat go unheard, so by the time I find myself once again having to remind the others that we need to crouch on the leeward side to help with heel in low wind, my voice is sharp and irritable. I surprise myself with this version of Phoebe, who I haven’t seen for a long time. Not since grade school, when I used to organize my friends’ games and activities during recess, before I switched to French immersion and lost that confidence and comfort of familiarity.

But perhaps it’s starting to come back, little by little. During the ABYC Donald Sommerville long distance race last Saturday, I stood up to lean against the shrouds, dressed in my Xtratuf booties and a summer weight Gil black bib over my tie-dyed t-shirt, squinting at any sign of a puff or lift over the gently rippling water. I was certainly dressed like a sailor, with my North Sails duffle bag stuffed with even more layers in case of foul weather. When in the world had I acquired so much sailing gear? Not only that, but all season long I had truly felt myself to be a sailor and racer, able to discuss starting line strategies, wind and weather conditions, competitors’ progress up the course, the race committee’s management of the event, and sailing instructions. The week before, the other AHMEN race committee volunteers had praised my competence when I checked in boats and counted them off at the start line, and the week before that, I saved an old jib from being blown when it tore against the bow rail by hollering my lungs out in high winds during the QCYC Open, then dashed back to the cockpit when Roel and Josh were taping it up when I realized that no one was on the main.

As the window to sailing season closed with the dates of unmasting and winter storage approached, I felt a wash of melancholy that the late September winds swept away. Earlier in the month, copies of my essay collection, Relative to Wind: On Sailing, Craft and Community arrived on my doorstep and I opened the box to another set of emotions. It’s a book that I started writing in mid-2022, between my transition from New Brunswick back to Toronto, and that I completed early in spring 2024. When I began writing the book, I still felt half-in, half-out of the world of sailing, hardly qualified to write about it or even to call myself a sailor. I hadn’t yet taken dinghy classes or become a race committee volunteer or a boat owner or even grasped some basic concepts. Somehow, during the writing of the book and my full plunge into the sport, the competency grew and now during a race I hear myself commenting on wind conditions in the harbour or halyard tension and feel a relieved surprise. The language of sailing, at last, has become an easier vernacular.

I’ve been sharing this book throughout this fall to those who are only dimly aware of the distant white sails on Lake Ontario and to those who have stocked their own memories with races and cruises. Even though it’s my third book, this is in a new genre, with a new publisher, and so there are some uncharted waters for me. For instance, I’ve been surprised at the attention the book has gotten thanks to the energetic work of my publicist at Assembly Press, Debby Degroot. I’ve an excerpt in from Kathryn Mockler’s Substack newsletter, Send My Love to Anyone, a short review in the July/August issue of the Literary Review of Canada, on Kirkus Review, The Miramichi Reader, The Winnipeg Free Press and on CBC Books. In October, I did a brief interview on CBC Radio’s Fresh Air with Ismaila Alfa. I certainly never received so much interest so early with my poetry collections, and I’ve becoming aware that nonfiction gathers a whole new readership and level of attention On top of which, I’m now a sports writer, which is also leading to other opportunities, such as presenting at the Toronto International Boat Show in January and speaking at yacht clubs in Hamilton, Prince Edward County, and perhaps even Boston! So I close out this year grateful that readers have found their way to Relative to Wind, and perhaps finding a new capacity in themselves.