"That's — better," Alfred admitted, although it still wasn't where he would have liked it. He tried to find words to instruct her a little more precisely from where he was sitting, but he wasn't sure what to say. These girls had no vocabulary for the task at hand, and translating sailing jargon into anything else just sounded silly, and was rather imprecise, besides. See the wavy bit? Pull the rope here and make it a flat bit. His stomach almost churned at the mere thought of letting something so ridiculous leave his mouth.

So he decided the best thing to do would be to go over and show her. Turning to one of the nearest girls, he said, "Here, can you take the tiller for a minute? Just keep us going straight. Towards — that point there," he said, picking an object in the distance. That was a learn-to-sail basic; always have something in the distance to look at when you're trying to steer. Believing that he'd given her all the necessary directions, Alfred headed up towards where the blond was sitting.

"So," he said as he took a seat next to her. "Let's let it out just a bit more. You've almost got it. Oh — and you see this cleat, here? You want to keep the end of the line knotted there — just a quick half-hitch will do — so that if you drop the line for some reason, it doesn't fall out to sea," he explained. Having been distracted from his original task he hadn't paid particular attention to the sailing terminology slipping back into his directions. "If it goes out and your jib starts luffing, and you don't have it hitched here, you have to stand up at the front and draw it back in from the edge of the sail, and that can be dangerous depending on where you're at and what the boat's doing."