I love sailboat racing.

No I don't.

Well, I kind of do.

OK, at least I like the idea of making a boat go as fast as possible around a course, using just strings, sails, wind, and guile. That's cool — I think.

On the other hand, I try to avoid situations that are sure to become showcases for my inadequacies. Square dancing for example. Or public speaking. Or writing for publication.

Or swimming. Once I sank like a stone to the bottom of the lake during a simple summer camp swimming game and had to be dragged ashore. I don't swim in public any more.

I try to be humble. I try not to be humiliated. It's a fine line. Which is why I'd avoided sailboat racing for five decades.

I'm a pretty good sailor, or at least not a bad one (that's the humble part). I don't mind making mistakes in front of friends and family; they've come to expect it.

But as soon as people start telling me what to do — like "ALLEMANDE LEFT AND SWING YOUR SWEETIE" OR "SET THAT TWING ABOUT 1 INCH BELOW THE LIFELINE!" — and when to do it — "NOW! — and others are counting on me to pull it off — NOW! — things change drastically. I become a duh.

Which is why my patient but clearly frustrated friend, Tom Brown, grabbed a Magic Marker a few weeks ago and wrote on the deck of Rosebud, his J24, right in front of my face, "Up" and "Down," next to the spinnaker pole controls that I'd been mixing up all day. That way, he figured, at least he had a fighting chance of placing in the J24 Silver Anniversary Regatta in Newport, R.I. in which he had inadvisedly asked me to crew in July.

Tom, a boatyard manager in New Hampshire, probably has more racing experience than five of you put together, but he'd been away from it for a while when he bought his J24 earlier this year and started to assemble a crew. Although I was utterly honest about all the blank pages in my racing resume, he asked me to come along on this J24 extravaganza.

He seduced me with promises of great photographs of the scores of J24s; of the J24 luminaries with whom we would rub shoulders under the big top, like Rod Johnstone, the father of the fleet, racing with his son on Ragtime; and with the promise of competing against some of the best racers in the country, like the eventual Silver Fleet winners Brad Read and Tim Healy (I hadn't heard of them either).

The boats would carry names both intimidating — Gator, Insatiable, Obstreperous, Medulitis, Eraserhead, Bad Dog — and, well, cute. Like Rosebud.

And there was Rosebud's crew: Norm, Tom's dear friend and long-time racing buddy; and Barbara, a relative newcomer to the sport who was being trained for the foredeck.

As we headed out for the first of what would be four days of racing (I'd have to leave after two, as if anyone would care), Tom and Norm explained my duties in the well, where I would pre-feed the guys, pack the chute and pull a few lines — twings, uphaul, downhaul, vang.

I think Tom began having second thoughts after our first downwind leg. With half the chute still heaped in the cockpit, I became distracted by an interesting wave or a pretty bird or something.

"Sandy, let's get that chute below!" Tom ordered. "C'mon, be aware, look around you and see what needs doing!"

That's when Tom and Norm's remarkable relationship became apparent.

"Don't say that, Tom," Norm said. "Just drive the boat."

"OK," said Tom. "I just want people to be aware."

"Let me worry about that, Tom," said Norm. "Drive the boat.

"OK," said Tom, who went back to driving the boat.

They could just as well have been talking about toasting bread, for all the emotion in their voices, which was none. No accusatory tone, no defensive comeback. Through two days of crises, which is pretty much what sailboat racing is all about anyway, this never changed. Norm always knew what Tom was going to do before Tom knew himself; Tom knew what Norm was thinking before Norm even thought it. They were synchronized sailors.

Even when I fell overboard, they were as cool as cucumbers.

"Head up, Tom, head up."

"Why?"

"Sandy's in the water."

"Oh. OK."

It was close to the end of our second day of racing. Our new recruit, Judy, a mysterious ultralight who would be useless on the rail, had taken over the well. I was hanging my 185-pound gut over the rail and helping Barbara with her foredeck chores.

I was feeling pretty good. Tom had proclaimed me a fast learner. Tacking had gone from clumsy to sort of clumsy. I was bleeding from various wounds inflicted by the boat as I dragged myself from rail to rail. "Blood for the boat!" Tom exclaimed during our last windward leg. One more mark, a spinnaker set, a nice downwind run in a freshening late-afternoon breeze and we'd be surfing toward the finish.

Tom wasn't happy with our position at the back of the fleet — so far we'd had an 11th, a 14th, and a 15th out of 19 boats — but he shrugged it off to a new crew and a new boat, and not an easy one to sail at that. Despite its insane popularity — more than 5,000 have been built since Johnstone put the first one together in his garage in 1976 — the J24 is a boat with a long, steep learning curve. To love it, it seems, is to revile it. I heard the boats described in a variety of ways, from "pigs" to "a Mack truck," but these always turned out to be terms of endearment.

Now, after two days at the helm, Tom was beginning to get comfortable with Rosebud, and had even spoken approvingly of his crew.

But as we prepared to gybe and set the chute, I, for some reason, launched myself a little too enthusiastically across the deck. Rosebud took an odd roll. Quick as that I was helplessly and hopelessly airborne.

"Well I'll be damned," I remember thinking,, "I'm actually going overboard and there's nothing I can do about it."

Splash.

The rest was really pretty anticlimactic. My PFD popped me to the surface. My hat floated away. I swam better than I ever had before. I grabbed a stanchion, hooked a foot over the rail, Norm hauled me aboard, the paparazzi clicked away, Tom ordered me to the well, and off we went, lapped by only one boat.

"Sorry guys," I said.

"Shit happens," Tom said, allowing as to how in his entire racing career he couldn't remember anyone falling off a boat during a race. Norm couldn't either.

"I really feel stupid," I said.

"Let's get our heads back into the race," Tom said.

We never did. We finished 17th in that race, just a stemhead fitting behind our nemesis, Ten Speed. On the long run back into Newport Tom smoked a cigarette. Norm talked knowledgeably about something and gave the tiller to Barbara. I handed out sandwiches from the safety of the well and dabbed blood from a small gash on my knee.

Over the next two days of racing without me, Rosebud's crew would do no better. No worse, but no better. That was good enough for my wounded psyche.