Truancy

Sailing 101 - Day Six,  Bueller?... Bueller?... Bueller?

Now, lets be clear about this - I didn't miss the class, I wasn't sick, there wasn't a death in the family.  I skipped class completely.   And much like our friend Ferris, the evening involved the somewhat equivalent to a Ferrari.  I guess I have never been one for organized education. I'm a doer and sometimes all those classes just get in the way.  

What bad influence is to blame, you might ask?  You could say... it was another boat.  I know... I know... that's not fair to Chuting Star, to leave her decks for another boat's.  But  sometimes you gotta grab opportunities in life when they're presented, or forever hold your peace.   And this opportunity was just that.  Her name is "Party Girl" and she's a Wavelength 24.  For all you tech geeks you can get her stats here.

Party Girl

Let's back up a bit and I'll explain.  When we first started looking into classes for sailing, the Sailing 101 class was the obvious first step but the next step wasn't so obvious.  We had options - such as buying our own boat and learning through our mistakes, and hoping that capsizing wouldn't be one of them.  Then there were continuing classes of which several in our area would have make a good follow ups to the Sailing 101 class.  But the one constant I heard from most well seasoned sailors was, "If you want to learn how to sail, the fastest way is to join a racing crew."

This is where Adrienne's and my learning processes differ.  I don't just jump into something, especially not feet first.  Nope - it's head first for me in almost anything I set out to do.  So this next step of being on a racing crew had been on my radar and was sure to follow the Sailing 101 class.  With class ending this week, I started looking on the local sailing forum for a crew to join that wanted a total newbie on their boat.  As you can imagine, that might not be the easiest thing to achieve.  

Looking through the messages on the forum, I was in search of something that said "Needing crew, no experience, if you have a pulse you're on"  or, "Wanted, rail meat for next week's race" I came across a couple of those but they were a few days old and had already been filled by the time I responded.  So the only things left were solicitations like this 

Just lost my mid-deck for Memorial Day regatta and need an experienced (not necessarily on an S20) crew member - would love them to join us on Thursday. Please contact me directly at:

and

We've lost our foredeck for the season on Wavelength 24 and need a replacement. Prefer an experienced person but will train an experienced sailor. 

We plan on racing nearly every Thursday until the water level drops too low, and will do regattas.

So, there are club races every Thursday and there are the more serious regional races every so often called regattas.  But the important words in those messages wern't race or regatta.  No, the word that carries the most weight for someone in my position would be "experienced" - of which I have none.  From the little I have gathered about foredeck and mid-deck positions on the boat, the foredeck is the more difficult of the two.  Given those facts, I decided to reply to the foredeck position.

However, I didn't reply immediately to the ad. Nervousness combined with putting myself in the vulnerable position of calling this guy and saying, "Yes, I know your ad says experienced, but you should give me a try.", delayed the call.  It wasn't until the next day about 5 or 6 hours before the race that I called, and did my best to sell my great attributes and why I would be a good crew memeber.  I'm not sure if it was my sales pitch or the fact that he was short of crew just hours before the race, but he said, "Can you come out tonight and we'll give you a try?". Of course I said "Yes!".

I showed up early to familiarize myself with the boat and to meet the rest of the crew.  We went over rigging the boat and talked about what the foredeck position would entail.  Then we set sail for the race course and I got a quick run-down on the basics of sailboat racing. On the race course there must have been 25 or 30 boats sailing back and forth waiting for their groups to start. With all these boats coming and going, to and fro, back and forth, zigzag and crisscross - my job was to hang out on the very very front of the bow and be the eyes for the helmsman, helping him to navigate because of the blind spot created by the headsail.  We managed to avoid running into another boat so I think I passed this stage of the test.  

When it was our turn to start, we sailed as close to the starting line as we could, waiting for the horn signaling we could cross the line.  During this stage of the race my job was to make sure the headsail made it smoothly and quickly from one side of the bow to the other when we turned.  This involved me lying on the bow flat out on my back, feet facing the back of the boat with my head towards the bow, pulling the bottom of the sail towards me and helping it around the mast to the other side of the boat. While I was doing this the boat was changing directions. Some of you might get the implications of this, but what some people might not be aware of is the sharp angle change that happens during this turn.  At times the boat can have enough tilt, or heel as they call it, to get almost one whole side of the boat out of the water and the other side has the edge of the deck rail in the water. When you change directions that angle reverses itself fairly quickly. As you can imagine, staying in one spot while lying on your back can be quite the challenge for me, and quite comical when viewed by the mid-deck crew.

While we didn't win any blue ribbons, the race was a blast and was a great learning experience.  After the race, at the dock, the camaraderie within our boat, as well as with the others around us, was accompanied by a few beers and great conversation. Apparently I passed all the necessary tests, because I was asked to show up next week to crew again.

~J~

Little House on the Boatie

Sailing 101- Day Five - Home is where you set your Anchor

 It's our fifth day of this sailing class and even though we could launch a sail boat, sail around for a few hours, and bring her back to the dock - we have only scratched the surface of sailing knowledge.   We've covered the basics of sailing - like going in a straight line, turning in the different directions and all the knowledge it takes to make those happen.  There are subjects like anchoring that one might think to be straightforward. But a quick request of the all knowing Google shows at least a half a dozen books exclusively dealing with anchoring.  

Now, you have to hand it to our instructors. They tackled this topic with simplicity and brevity. Makes one wonder what lurks inside of all those books to justify 200 plus pages. Anchoring is simple; you just pull up to where you want the anchor to actually sit, drop the anchor straight down and estimate  the depth of water, plus the height of the boat deck off the water, plus the highest and lowest tide for the area you're in (luckily in our case, being on a lake we can skip this part), multiplied by the the magic number seven gives you the length of rode (sailing term for the "rope" that is attached to the anchor). Once you have done all this, you back the boat up letting out the rode to the calculated length.  Finally you tie off the rode to the bow of the boat and give the engine a good bit of power in reverse to set the anchor and hope it holds. 

Well - given all that hoo-ha just to drop a simple anchor in seven feet of water with little wind, no tide, and no other boats around to worry about drifting into, maybe there is a justification for hundreds of pages of anchoring theory and technique. 

Once secured to the land beneath the water, the boat puts on a different hat. For me this is one of the idyllic parts that attracted me to sailing. There is this, sort of - adventurous - Huck Finn-ish - transformation that takes place when you combine a boat, and a house. It makes me feel like I could sail away and be my own little island, without the nagging of parents and other grown ups to worry about. Only, now that I have such an opportunity, I am the grown up and the nagging parent.  

I'm told that most people that want to be on their own island have issues with sharing, don't play well with others or are extreme introverts. I'm not quite sure which of these categories I fall into, but I'm sure that there is a therapy group somewhere that could help me integrate better into society and forget those youthful musings - but that wouldn't be much fun now, would it.

Down below in the depths of the boat lives a teeny-tiny little house. Sink, porta-potty, counter, couches, beds, etc. - all adding up to the basic living necessities. The only thing that would make it better is if I were still seven years old. That way I could actually stand straight up, stretch out in the bed and the sink counter wouldn't only come up just above my knees.  

But for now I'll have to settle for sleeping in the fetal position, squatting like a duck to use the sink and I can just forget about standing erect.  On the brighter side of things - I hear the squatty little toilet can do wonders for my large intestine.

~J~

An Introduction...

Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate

When I was just a little girl, I pretended I was a pirate.  I was rarely the mean pirate*, the swashbuckling one, the one with a parrot or a wooden leg or even the one with a sword.  I was nearly always the one climbing the masts to release the sails, or I was the one up in the bucket yelling, “Land!”.  I was the one adventuring to far away lands, sharing the camaraderie of rum and a badly sung song.  The one sailing off into the sunset.   

When I casually mentioned sailing to Jim this past winter, and I saw the light in his eyes spark, I was just a little scared.   Jim makes things happen.  That’s what that spark means. And Jim and I don’t do things ‘sorta’.  We’re all-in kinda people (though I have a more fair weather streak than he does). So the question was, am I ready to make this more than pretend?  

And the answer is YES!YES!ABSOLUTELY!  I want to sail away into the sunset, I want to travel the world meeting new people and new cultures, I want to have adventure and boredom on the high seas.  I want to worry about kraken and floating containers, and batteries, and seeping boats.  I want to take the pretend dream and turn it into reality!

But first, I want to learn how to sail. 

Tonight is the last night of the ASA Sailing 101 class offered through the local parks and recreation department.  We’re doing some sailing practice, going over crew overboard procedures and maneuvers, and probably some review.  Next week I’ll take the certification class.

It’s important to me that I become a proficient sailor independent of Jim.  And because we’re learning together, and because he learns at a much quicker pace than I do, I don’t want to let him fill in my gaps or pick up my slack.  So, our education process will probably split here.  He’ll pursue a more gungho-learn-it-all-right-this-very-minute-by-osmosis style, and I’ll pursue a slightly-slower-give-me-time-to-process-and-think-it-through style. 

And we’re both on our way to making those dreams of sailing away more than just dreams.

-Adrienne

*Thievery, yelling at people, wenching, pillaging, raping and killing hold little interest for me.  And present day pirates are a little too badass and mean for my tastes.

Chuting Star

Sailing 101 - Day Four, Hip, Hop, & Jibe

6pm - heading out on the water with hardly enough wind to ripple the surface.  We raised the mainsail- wait and watch. Far off to the south, the small triangle of other boats start to fill as they picked up speed.  We start to see the Cat’s paws effect the wind creates on the water.  As a swath of dark and choppy water approaches us, with the wind just ahead of it, the sails of the boat 100 feet off our bow fill and they race off just as the wind gives life to our sails.  Suddenly, we transform from a buoy to a sailboat.

I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize.  I have failed to introduce you to - Chuting Star.  The sailboat that has so graciously put up with us.  She’s a J24 -- for all you geeks who want to check her stats you can find it all here.

Our novice hands have: over tightened her sheets, jammed her bolt rope, confused her luff for her leech, tacked her without grace, and manhandled her tiller.  Despite all this she still turned on a dime and gave us 6.45 knots of pure delight.

Jibe Ho -  Now, there’s a fun command to give.  Just the sound of it evokes a bit high seas, ancestral romanticism.  Todays lesson was on how to jibe - and no, this isn’t a lesson about a dance with excessive articulation.  If you caught the post on tacking you will understand when I say that jibing is kinda the opposite of tacking.   If you didn’t catch that post, go back and check it out.  

The jibe maneuver has the reputation that so many in Hollywood have taken advantage of, to give action and/or a danger effect to sailing.  To oversimplify what jibing is, let’s just say it’s making a turn that involves turning the bow of the boat away from the wind so far that it puts the bow in the opposite direction of the wind and then back towards the wind on the other side.  Jibing should be a slow and delicate operation just like brain surgery and just like brain surgery, if done incorrectly or accidentally it can have undesired effects. If losing crew overboard and doing irreparable damage to the boat is your goal, then by all means - let the jibe rock and roll. If not then you might want to stick with Schubert Symphony No.8

So as the instructor said "That's pretty much what a boat does -- it goes straight and it turns." Now that we have the two types of turns down and can run a straight course, we have the basics covered. Which isn't the same as being ready for hitting the high seas. Good thing we have two more classes left.

And yes - as cheesy as it sounds, we did sail off into the sunset.

~ J ~

Put Her In Irons

Sailing 101 - Day Three, Tack, Tack, and more Tack

What can I say - today’s class totally rocked!

As we left for the class, the rain was coming down in sheets.  Uninspiring, to say the least. Checking weather from three internet sources before we left, we were given three different predictions for the same area.  Rain ending right before class, rain ending right after class, and rain stopping before and continuing after class.  We made a small sacrifice to the rain gods and headed out hoping for the best and knowing that the Pacific Northwest’s weather predictions are a little like what’s behind door number three.

Upon arrival at the docks, the sun and the rain were jockeying for position to see which would stick around for the class.  Now, all this indecision of weather had an upside - wind - lots of wind.  That’s the thing about sailing, wind is your God and without it You are NOTHING.  We are supposed to know which direction the wind is coming from at all times and everything we do on the boat at is in relation to the wind.  Plus the little fact that the boat doesn’t move without it, makes the wind high up on the priority list.

The bulk of the class focused on one sailing maneuver called tacking.  For simplicity, lets just say tacking is a change of direction that swaps which side of the boat the wind is blowing on. This maneuver can allow the boat to sail indirectly to a destination that is directly where the wind is blowing from. While making this turn you must move the bow of the boat directly into and through the wind, so the wind is now blowing on the other side of the boat, and that’s where the trouble begins.  If you make this turn too slowly and hang out with your bow facing directly into the wind, your boat will come to a complete stop. And as we found out from the last post- if the boat isn’t moving, the boat isn’t steering. This can lead to all kinds of quandaries, like being blown onto the shore or not being able to get out of the way of an oncoming boat. But the most dreaded of these is the possibility of being boarded by pirates, shackled in irons and having your booty stolen.  To remind you of this least likely but greatly feared outcome, they have been ever so helpful and given it a special name to describe this.  

You guessed it - in irons.  

Yep, just those two little words. The wonders of the sailing language continue to amaze.  From what I can tell, our instructor exploited this use of this pirate story just so he could use an unofficial sailing word that seems to show itself both at sea and on land -  Arrgh!  Yes, he dropped the “A” bomb and this wasn’t the first time either.

Out on the water the sun began to win over the evening and made for some gorgeous sailing.  There were times when Adrienne was at the helm (steering), I was trimming the head sail and we had that boat flying over the water and leaning over far enough to have the edge rail  of the boat almost touching the water.

All I can say is, I want more!

~ J ~

Clever Pig

Sailing 101 -  Day Two, on the Water

Meet your sailboat, this was how the evening began.  Covering safety on the dock, boarding the boat, starting and running the engine, locating the different lines, halyards, sheets and shrouds.  As a finishing touch we attached a the main sail and the jib sail.  

We were now ready to sail - in theory.

For many of the crew, the thought of driving the boat in and out of the dock using the motor seemed as daunting if not more so than the thought of sailing the boat.  Having driven many motor boats in my life, I felt confident this would be a no brainer for me.  As I backed the boat out of it’s slot that confidence was reconfirmed.  It wasn’t until we shifted the motor into forward gear that my confidence started to slip away.  For starters the motor is way too small to just muscle the boat in the direction that you want. You have to plan ahead, finesse the boat,  take it out for a drink.   After all, this is a sailboat not a motor boat. It took for-ever for the reverse inertia of the sailboat to stop and a forward motion to begin.  Here’s where a slight panic set in and the realization that the tiller (that’s what steers the boat) failed to steer the boat when I pushed it to either side.  “You have no helm,” the instructor said, followed by “you need more speed before you can steer.”  No helm - more speed - you mean to tell me that I can’t steer away from the quickly approaching dock without going towards it faster!  With great trust,  I waited as the boat increased in speed heading for the dock opposite of ours.   And then it happened,  just like magic, there it was - control, I had helm.

Now, control with the motor is great, but it’s nothing compared to the moment when the sail is raised and you feel the silent power of the wind take hold.  All the reading about sailing theory, trying to picture in my mind the thing that I read about, came together and all started to make sense.  

With the vast amount of things to pay attention to and adjust at the same time, it’s lucky for me that I’m a little ADHD.  I loved the thought that every adjustment changes how fast the boat is going, and how it feels to steer it.  Even where another crew member is sitting in the boat can make all the difference in the world.

Port tack - I was told this term wasn’t an attribute of port wine.  Seeing how I should have been born in the Show Me State, I didn't take that at face value and would have to confirm it later. As it turns out, not a single mention of tack on the wine aroma wheel.  Just in case you have the same desire to see for yourself as I do you, you can check the chart below.  Here I thought we were going to enjoy a great port wine and all we had was the wind pushing on the left side of the sail as we looked towards the bow. 

I’m happy to report that there is no lack of puns and wordplay aboard our sailboat.  As if the official words on the sailboat weren't strange enough, we now get to use words like luff as a replacement for love.  And when asked what corner of the sail of this is, you can answer with “ I haven’t got a clew” but the granddaddy of them all is, cunningham. That’s the official term, but our well seasoned instructor couldn’t just leave it at that. Now, in my head, I would have expected some wordplay off of the television sitcom Happy Days.  That wouldn’t do, this little part of the boat gets the special pun honor of - wait for it -  “clever pig”.  Yes, you heard that right, you should have seen the confused looks that came over the crew when our instructor said “We have a clever pig on the boat.”  This is the point that I decided, I really liked this guy.

~ J ~

OK, here is your quiz from the last post. Let's see if you did your homework. I added some photos here that show the lines, sheets, halyards, and shrouds all in the same photo.  Can you tell the difference between the four?

Jabberwocky

Sailing 101 - First Day, in the Classroom

Ok, So I have been around boats all my life and know my bow from my stern as I bet many of us do. But the terminology that revolves around a sailboat is mind boggling. Words like leech, tack, roach, luff, clew - all well accepted in the sailing world - have little to do with the actual parts of the boat they are describing.  

And don’t even get me started on “ropes”. There must be a dozen “ropes” attached to these sailboats but we were instructed that there is only one “rope” on the sailboat and that’s the boltrope???  All the other “ropes” are called lines, well unless it’s a sheet or halyard or a shroud. And some of the “lines” turn to “sheets” depending on where they are being used. Confused yet?  Join the club. At least someone had the decent courtesy to divvy all the “ropes” up into two categories, standing and running - that I can hang with.

Before we get all wrapped up in knots, let me just say this. For a culture that uses so many words to create clarity at a moment when the wind is ripping and the seas are breaking over the bow, it has some strange idiosyncrasies in its word use.  There are several items on the sailboat with the same name.  I know, I know, you're probably thinking, "Really, with all those separate strange words that describe every little part we're going to start using the same words more than once!?" Yes Folks, that’s correct. On the sailboat there can be two heads with two entirely different purposes and They're no where near each other, and two things called the tack, which even more confusingly are in very close proximity.  

So, many of us know knots.  But the knots that you may have learned for camping, rock climbing or tying up the bad guy don’t necessarily translate into the sailing world very well.  And once you learn knots for sailing such as the bowline, you can have great debates with fellow sailors about the best ancestry of that knot and why the bowline from Dutch sailors is superior to a bowline, say from Spanish sailors or Tahitian sailors.   

My brain hurts, and we’re not even on the water yet!

~ J ~

Sailing Porn

Some six months ago or so, Adrienne awakened a hidden away desire in me to sail. Not just day sail around on lakes or in bays but serious off shore, blue water, live on the boat, sail around the world sailing.

All she had to say was the one little sentence "I would like to learn to sail, I have always wanted to sail."

Pandora's box had been opened. As with all things that I take on, I want to learn it all right here and right now.  Before most people would get the chance to take their first lesson, I have already bought dozens of books, picked out my favorite sailboat at the boat shows, bought my first sail boat, and circumnavigated the world twice.  Luckily my head first, full steam ahead methodology is well tempered by Adrienne's slower and more practical approach to things.  So at this point I can only report that we are lacking a sail boat, I only have maybe a dozen books and my head is full of the knowledge that comes from countless hours spent pouring over sail boats on eBay & Craigslist.  But tomorrow is a new day and with it comes our first sailing lesson.  Stick around and see what shenanigans we can get ourselves into!

~ J ~