More Sailing

I enrolled in in an advanced sailing class now. The setup is the same as for the first class: we will sail four mornings during two consecutive weekends, before class we have a little theoretical introduction, then we go out on the boats for a couple of hours.

This time we are sailing the Holder 14, slightly bigger boats that take two persons to sail, they are 14 foot long and can carry four people. The rigging is a little more complicated now, and these boats have a main sail and a jib, so we have one more sail to rig. So, rigging was sort of the most complicated part of the first class. Otherwise, the same basic sailing skills apply, we control the jib much in the same way as the main sail most of the time, except that the boats sit much more comfortably and one doesn't need to fear the boom all the time, the boats are slightly more responsive and faster, and the tiller comes with an extension that allows you to sit more up front in the boat although it is kind of awkward to handle.

We sailed three in the boat, and I was designated skipper when we took off, which meant that I steered the boat out of the cove and was the one to push it ashore and last person to jump in. Then we took turns while out there, and again I was at the tiller when we beached the boat at the end of the class.

For my second class on Sunday I was late (we had not slept half the night because of our neighbour's dog barking every couple of minutes) and missed the rigging, but got there in time to jump on the boat with a couple of other people. We had more or less the same tasks to accomplish as in the first class, that is to tack and jibe around three flags that formed a triangle, one side which we had to tack up on a beat. After I finished skippering our first triangle, my crew mates decided this was no fun, and that the fun thing to do would be to ignore all these flags and the crowd of our class mates boats and sail further out and just go back and forth on a beam reach where you could sort of more feel the wind. That was actually fun for a while too, our instructor even gave up on us after a while and completely left us alone doing our thing, but in the long run I got a bit bored. Sailing back and forth is not very challenging. Now, while one of my crew mates was mostly interested in heeling the boat, my other crew mate wanted to lie down and tan while we steered. I wanted to practice sailing. But I will get the chance too some day ...