Documentary explores sport of blind sailing

By DAVID GUNTER

Feature correspondent

SANDPOINT — Since 2009, film director Christine Knowlton has been tracking an elite group of sailors as they improve their nautical skills and engage in fierce competition. The subject matter is innately exciting, but made even more interesting for the fact that these sailors are blind.

Her documentary, titled “Sense the Wind”, will be shown at the Panida Theater this Friday, July 7, at 7 p.m.

The Sandpoint screening is part of a whirlwind road trip that is taking the director from coast-to-coast as she attends eights showings in 10 days. The venues range from small to large, with screens set up in libraries, clubs and the occasional theater.

“They’re really pulling out all the stops in Sandpoint,” she said, noting that interest is high in this community, thanks in large part to support from the Sandpoint Sailing Association.

Knowlton first learned about this corner of the sailing world when she heard U.S. Sailing Paralympic head coach Betsy Alison give a presentation on adaptive sailing, which included a brief mention of blind sailing. She was hooked by the concept and wanted to know more.

“It’s still a very young sport in a small niche,” the director said, adding that, all the same, blind sailing already has become an organized sport with international competition.

Knowlton had been involved in other television and film work, but was less familiar with the documentarian’s trade. And just as it was for the four sailors she followed in the film, the learning curve proved steep for her, as well.

“I went into it without the deep skill set that many documentary filmmakers have,” she said. “I was going by the seat of my pants and learning as I go.”

Knowlton elected to use a classic approach to making a movie, chronicling the action on the water and the interaction between the sailors and their instructors as it took place in front of her lens. The people, she explained, carry the story along.

“It was a very seamless group,” said Knowlton. “The sighted guides and the blind sailors have a very tight relationship and I was just the fly on the wall.”

In true documentary fashion, the director followed her subjects as they went about their lives, on-board and on shore. Some of the sailors, she pointed out, had been blind since birth, while others lost their sight in adulthood. Still, they all were challenged in the same way when it came time to take up a new sport.

“It was more a matter of each personality and how they all approached things in a fearless manner,” Knowlton said.

The movie could have been about sailing, just as it could have been about blind people. What it ended up being, according to the director, is a film about blind people who become sailors.

“For me, it had to be totally integrated,” she said. “I tried to let them take me along. I was going on a ride through life with them and sailing was what took me on that journey.”

The sailors in the film found out about the program through taking part in other adult rehabilitative activities, which included sports such as hiking, rock climbing and skiing. And while they can’t see their environment, they can sense it — an experience that was amplified and underscored as they began to harness the power of the wind in their sails.

One striking technique used by Knowlton was the use of GoPro cameras to capture a point-of-view perspective for each blind sailor. The director was captivated by the footage those cameras produced, each viewpoint as different as the sailor wearing the camera.

“The point-of-view photography varied so much with each person,” she said. “I tried to stay true to that particular vision.”

As the sailing crews went about the difficult work of learning the ropes, Knowlton was making her own voyage of discovery as she filmed them. It was, she said, a personal evolution.

“I learned to be as resilient as they are, to go with the passion and just not stop,” she said. “I learned to trust others. I learned to listen — and trust.”

The reaction of moviegoers has been much the same, with audiences finding out as much about themselves as they do about the sailors on the screen.

“Everyone I’ve showed it to — able or disabled, sailor or non-sailor, adolescent or elderly — has been inspired,” Knowlton said. “They say, ‘I thought I had problems — they’re nothing compared to what these people went through.’”

“Sense the Wind” will carry the director on yet another coast-to-coast trip later this summer, as she makes stops in both California and New York to present the film. At the end of the year, these personal screenings and visits with the director will be replaced by the wider distribution of video on demand.

“By then, I’ll have to let the baby grow up and have a life,” she said.

Referring to the movie as a kind of offspring comes naturally to Knowlton, who said the project has snowballed to include not only her collaborators in the making of the film, but also a “circle of support” that has helped to raise money and promote it.

“As it’s grown, there has been an incredible team around this,” she said. “They say it takes a village to raise a child. Well, I’ve learned that it takes a city to make a film.”

“Sense the Wind,” presented locally by the Sandpoint Sailing Association, will show at the Panida Theater this Friday, July 7, at 7 p.m. Tickets for the hour-long documentary are $5. Knowlton will be on hand for a Q&A session after the film showing.

For more information and to view the movie trailer, visit online at: www.sensethewind.com.