The Skipper

Having finished the Advanced Sailing class, I can now rent small boats from the aquatic center, like the Holder 14 we learned to sail on. For $50 I can rent a boat six times for sessions of two and a half hour each time. So, I took C sailing on the bay today.

I must admit that I was a little nervous, as I had never rigged the boat all by myself before and it had been a couple of weeks since my last lesson. But the rigging was finally easier than I remembered it and it barely took us five minutes. As for the sailing, well, the winds were pretty strong today, probably stronger than they ever were during my advanced classes, so I found it pretty challenging to balance the boat. Actually, another thing that may have felt different was the fact that we were now only two in the boat, whereas previously we always had three people, whereof two always sitting up front in the boat, one on each side, to balance it. Today I had C sitting up front, and he would shift sides each time we tacked or jibed, just like me, so we were having a lot more weight shifting than usual.

In the end it was fine, I got somewhat used to it. We sailed pretty fast, with that wind, so there was more heeling. There were also much bigger waves on the water, more unrest, more ups and downs. With all that heeling and C hanging on to the jib sheet, the bolt into which you cleated the jib came loose, after which the jib had to be held on the left side all the time. Somewhat more action than I remembered from my sailing class. It was fun though. We sailed for a couple of hours, then beached the boat smoothly, and derigged without any problems.

We will probably be renting a boat to go out every so often now, for me to practice my sailing ...