The Coast Guard handed me a certificate that allows me to make a living carrying people, cargo or anything else that displaces up to fifty tons of water. They did this without seeing me on a vessel of any kind, not even on a dock and for all they know the only knot I know how to tie is on my sneakers or marrying. They do not know if I can use a wrench or a winch or tell the difference, or whether I can leave a dock or return to one. What about radios? What about navigating?

They took documents that could have been easily forged as proof of my hours at sea. They never verified them. They had me absorb and regurgitate, temporarily, just enough information to slide through their bureaucracy.

Worse, even though I have sailed to Hawaii five times and survived, the license forbids me to do that for hire. I'm required stay within 200 miles of a coast. That would be where all the rocks and beaches and waves and wrecks are. I'm allowed to sail through Alaskan waters and fight massive tidal currents, without ever having read a tide table. I can pass through locks in canals, never having even seen locks, other than in banks, on doors or on the heads of lovely women.

Who wants to ride with me?

The FAA, conversely, has every moment of training documented and verified. Instructors are watched by instructors who are watched by the FAA staff. Mindless information must be spit back on a multiple-choice test, yes, but then someone designated by the FAA takes a deep breath and climbs into a plane with the student and watches for hours to ensure that metal won't rain down on civilization, at least in the near future.

Both industries call their certificates "licenses to learn." Everyone had better stay out of my way.

While I was taking advantage of corporate ineptitude, redundancy noted, and staying on or close to shore, except for the occasional big race rides, Alia was making herself indispensable to The School. In four years, she surpassed my sea time, experience and capability.

The unrelenting waves over the thousands of miles of ocean prevented Alia from broadening her experience in other things. Like me earlier, she had drenched herself in too much of what was once a good thing. Unlike me, she avoided stark declarations of "never again" and instead, slowly reduced her commitments to The School. She signed up for more coastal routes that stopped at night to anchor or, better, dock in port. So, it was in the latter stages of her sailing career, in the summer of 2010, that she worked Osprey up the Columbia River and met Emileanne Lendennon, without any introduction from me.