Growing up, my mother took my three siblings and me to Switzerland every summer to visit my dad’s family. I must have been around eight when she signed us up for sailing lessons, which meant that for a couple weeks every summer we would pile into my uncle’s old VW Golf, strap on our life jackets and set sail on Lake Geneva.
We eventually graduated to catamarans, and one day, as my older brother, Henri, and I were sailing (a generous word for what I was doing. Truly all I can remember from these lessons is a vague understanding of the figure 8 knot and the boom hitting my head at least seven times per lesson), the air shifted, the clouds came in and suddenly we found ourselves in the middle of a storm. Swiss summer storms are intense, so I was shocked but not surprised when I saw a few of our fellow catamarans capsizing and the teacher racing ahead in what now appeared to be the flimsiest dinghy I’d ever seen…
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