I learned how to sail last summer in Alaska.

My workplace in Alaska is about 50 miles from the town of Seward, which lies on Resurrection Bay and is home to an American Sailing Association (ASA) certified school called Sailing Inc., where I enrolled in a two-day 101 course.

This wildly amused my co-workers, who called me “Captain Alexandra” for weeks and were full of questions. How did I find out about the school? What was class like?

I found out about the school because I passed it so often. My job includes driving tourists into Seward twice a week. Sailing Inc. was hard to miss — right on the highway, with a 30-foot “for sale” schooner in its parking lot.

As for why I wanted to “learn the ropes”? Honestly, I just get bored easily. I love learning new things and leaping into new adventures.

Sailing is completely different from anything I’d endeavored before, with a steep learning curve — the parts of the boat, tacking vs. jibing, the rules of right-of-way on open water.

There are many different knots to tie. The bowline is easy enough, but I still get all confused with the clove hitch, cleat hitch, rolling hitch and two half hitches, just to name a few.

It was a whirlwind of information to cram into a two-day course. Though I got an “ASA Certified Sailor” certificate upon completing the course, I was an entirely unconfident, underqualified sailor.

I immediately began searching for opportunities to get more hours on the water, which led me to my current boatyard gig in Florida.

In the interim, I consumed as much sailing-related material as I could, including (from the Seward library’s sizable nautical section) “The Essential Book of Knots,” along with Jonathan Raban’s travelogue “Passage to Juneau” and a biography of the adventurers Miles and Beryl Smeeton.

I found plenty of films to stream, including the documentaries “The Untold Story: America’s Cup” and “The Race to Alaska.”

Netflix recently put out “True Spirit,” a fictionalized depiction of 16-year-old Australian sailor Jess Watson, who solo circumnavigated the globe in 2010 — at the time, the youngest person to do so.

As an idealistic adventurer constantly in search of new material to get all dreamy-eyed over, I guess it was inevitable that I eventually landed (no pun intended) on sailing as a pastime.

It’s been lying dormant in my unconscious, ever since those first elementary school lessons about the worldwide exploration of men like Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus and Captain Cook.

It’s a marvel, that era when tall-masted ships roamed the Earth, braving powerful storms and cutthroat pirates in the search for new lands. It’s inspired countless fictional oceangoing voyages: “Moby Dick,” “Treasure Island,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

Imagination and grandeur aside, ships were vital to world commerce for centuries; sailing metaphors are embedded in the English language.

We can anchor ourselves, or stay afloat. Either hit the deck or clear it. Batten the hatches, or weather the storm.

Are you on an even keel or in the doldrums? And, who doesn’t love to yell, “Ahoy!” That’s how all of my friends greet me now, at least.

If nothing else, sailing is a skill that offers me a new and novel way to experience Alaska, a place I love too much.

Now that I’ve gotten my sea legs, I look forward to plying Alaskan waters when I return north this summer.

Alexandra DeArmon grew up in Frederick. She now divides her time between Maryland and Alaska. She can be reached at xandra.dearmon@gmail.com.