This Saturday I had a fascinating experience. I was one of twenty junior sailors in the Chicagoland area to get to crew on Farr 40 sailboats in one of the days of the world championship being held out of Monroe Harbor. The top 20 boats in the world who were participating in the event each had one randomly assigned high school sailor in an attempt to get younger racers into big boat sailing.
I was selected to crew on a boat that had traveled in from Turkey. The crew was made up of a Turkish owner with six hired Turkish hands who spoke almost no English plus three hired Americans. And me. When I went to introduce myself to the team, the three Americans were sitting separate from the rest of the crew. I found it very easy to introduce myself to the Americans, and nearly impossible to the Turks. Not just because of language. They spoke enough English to understand I was telling them my name, but it was more of a cultural divide. It was like neither party was comfortable with the other.
As soon as we stepped on the boat however, everything changed. I would mumble and point at things and they would know exactly what I was asking, they would say something in Turkish and gesture and I would understand exactly what to do. I wasn't an American thrown into an unfamiliar group anymore. I was a sailor among sailors. The language barrier was non-existent because there was so much non-verbal communication and understanding that words were not needed.
It was the first time I had seen culture as something unrelated to heritage. I've always seen myself as a well an American from a well off suburb, and in that sense I clashed with the Turks. But now I think my culture is at least as defined by me being a sailor as it is by where I'm from and how I was raised. When I was in a sailing state of mind, I felt as comfortable with the Turkish team as I would have with someone that had grown up in the same neighborhood as me.
As soon as we stepped on the boat however, everything changed. I would mumble and point at things and they would know exactly what I was asking, they would say something in Turkish and gesture and I would understand exactly what to do. I wasn't an American thrown into an unfamiliar group anymore. I was a sailor among sailors. The language barrier was non-existent because there was so much non-verbal communication and understanding that words were not needed.It was the first time I had seen culture as something unrelated to heritage. I've always seen myself as a well an American from a well off suburb, and in that sense I clashed with the Turks. But now I think my culture is at least as defined by me being a sailor as it is by where I'm from and how I was raised. When I was in a sailing state of mind, I felt as comfortable with the Turkish team as I would have with someone that had grown up in the same neighborhood as me.
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