The girl grew up in marinas. Refurbished outboard engines for fun. Varnished teak for money. She had a tiller in her hand before she ever touched a doll or a rattle. Sailboats were her friends and dreams, siblings and parents. Across the bay they’d glide like creatures compelled by mysterious destinies and her eyes glided greedily after them. As a toddler she taught herself to sail, sitting on stacks of books on seamanship and navigation charts so her chubby little fingers could reach the tiller. Taught herself when to jibe and when to tack. Days and nights and years she spent on the water, reading the waves, the winds, feeling the current in her bones, the tides in her guts.

The world was the wind which washed over her. She wanted to become one with that wind, with the world, and free herself from the need for a vessel—a boat, her body—to mediate. She borrowed a heavy-duty sewing machine and combed marinas up and down the coast for blown out sails, rescuing them from rotting ketches and salvaging them off forgotten schooners. For two feverish weeks she cut and stitched these cast-asides until her sail suit was finished. She wore the suit and it enveloped her, a second skin billowing with the promise of liberation.

She walked to the edge of the shore. The waves blessed her venture. The winds, the world, picked up. Gust became gale. Her heels lifted. Then, her toes. The rest of her followed, swept aloft, above, away toward vertiginous freedom, past seagulls and airplanes, tunneling through clouds, meteoric debris caked along her face, satellites whirred on their set trajectories, and up she went, flapping and flailing into the geocorona and from there—

To this day, sailors moored in the bay say you can hear her sail suit ruffling above you on windy nights, a whooshing behind the sound of line and tackle clanging against mast. Fair winds, they claim, are bound to follow.

Jon Doughboy is a wellness guru using the mystical healing properties of prose to unlock scribblers’ fasciae and imaginations. Book your next thumb sucking & writing workshop @doughboywrites

‘Sail Girl’ is the first featured piece in the Urban Pigs Press CASTAWAYS callout, which celebrates the release of the latest Urban Pigs title Robinson Crusoe Maybe by guest editor Colin Gee. Colin is founder and editor of The Gorko Gazette and author of several books.