On the oars, sans tarp
Have you ever slept on a row of oars? No? Really never? Well you should try it. Oars are excellent teachers.
At the Nova Scotia Sea School crews of ten teenagers and two instructors sail the Nova Scotia coast in 30-foot open boats with no engines, no cabins, no electronics. The boats have two masts with sails, and eight 13-foot-long oars. Those are the engine. We anchor at night in some protected cove, but we live in the boat, sleeping on the oars under a tarp. The teenagers learn to take command of the boat, and of their lives, but we accept that the boat is really the one in command.
To go to bed, once the tarp is set up between the masts, first we get what we need for the night out of our duffels: sleeping bag, foul weather gear and boots in case of a storm, warm clothes to wear during our turn on night watch. To make a place to sleep we take the 13-foot oars and lay them side by side to span the gaps between the rowing benches. All the oars together next to each other make a kind of platform that we sleep on. They’re hard and uncomfortable, or we could say they’re stimulating and fresh.
Once the oars are in place we spread out our sleeping bags. Now we’re lying on the oars over the duffels below so we can’t get at the duffels anymore. If anyone forgets something we all get up so we can shift the oars. If in the morning one person won’t get up, none of us can get at our duffels to dress.
The oars are in charge here, and they command a culture of teamwork and cooperation. They leave little choice. We designed it this way when we built the boat, so the instructors don’t have to say, “Okay, kids, it’s time to practice our teamwork. We’ve got this cool team building activity planned.” All we have to say is, “Time to go to bed.” The oars do the rest on their own.
It’s an extremely inefficient sleeping arrangement, and it would probably be possible to devise a system of panels that fold up into place at night to make individual beds, that can be folded down by each person if they need to get at their gear again. That would be practical efficiency, but not teaching efficiency. The command of the oars would be lost, and we’d be thrown back on the “cool team building activity.” In fact we know that the oars are better teachers than any of us.
(Note: I started the Nova Scotia Sea School in 1994, and still teach there occasionally. We build our own wooden boats and go on sailing expeditions along the coast, taking advantage of the Maritime traditions to help young people learn to grow up well.)
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I love this post. And you don’t even mention the stronger elements that can command teamwork in an open boat in open water. Wind and current and waves can issue demands too. What a great teaching platform!
I was a teenage student at the Sea School in the mid nineties and had the at times unbearable and at other times transcending experience of sleeping on oars on multiple occasions. I’m now a filmmaker living in New York, and I just completed production on my first feature film, Art Machine. The process of directing the film was an incredibly satisfying 19 days. But with all of my anticipation at getting to finally direct a feature, I was expecting bliss. Of course like anything else, it too had the quality of unbearable moments, and transcendence. And at the end of the day, I am so pleased to have gone through the ordeal/incredible experience. The other thing that struck me during production, slugging it out in the trenches with our amazing cast and crew, was just how influential Crane has been on my approach to leadership. I can’t thank him enough! And now this amazing gift of his inner musings on the subject.
Thank you Crane!
So true that we can often learn more from an inefficient system like the oar/beds than from efficiencies given to us to protect us from having to make the best of a bad situation.
Wonderful – again.
How much we learn in life from rocks and oars and …
Thanks, Crane, for reminding us.
Cheers, Paul