Those of you who are expecting another dunking, or to be entertained by hearing about me getting plonked in the head again may as well quit reading now. The only injury I had I didn't even notice 'till later. This lesson went pretty much as scheduled...
Again and as usual the weather didn't look like it was going to cooperate for our weekly lesson. We had rain in the morning, and rain was predicted for the evening. In fact, as I left the house, I immediately drove into rain showers.
But I quickly drove through the small shower, and the lake looked pretty nice as I drove over the bridge. There did seem to be *some* wind, but no whitecaps, so I was hoping that maybe we'd get to sail in something other than a tornado or wind so slight it couldn't push a tissue.
Getting out of the car, it seemed pretty nice. We had wind, slow enough that we could probably handle it, yet fast enough we could really sail. Joe, our instructor, agreed. We would sail. Finally.
We have five members in our class. (One person started the third week, if anyone's counting.) The four women split into pairs to sail the two JY 14's. Joe and I sailed a Coronado 15. It's a bigger, wider, *much* more stable boat, that also happens to be a bit faster than the JYs. I felt a lot more comfortable in the Coronado, and I was a lot less worried about capsizing.
After rigging, we started out. Joe drove the two of us out into the lake, then we switched so that I held the tiller and controlled the main sail. For a little over an hour we sailed back and forth across the lake trying to get the hang of tacking and gibing. In the lower wind, not being so rushed, tacking wasn't quite the problem it had been the week before. After a few trys I began to get the knack of pushing the tiller for the tack or gibe and simultaneously moving to the other side of the boat without letting go of either the tiller or the main sheet. I even started learning to point off in other directions and trim the mains'l appropriately.
The only problem was that the wind strength was pretty erratic. We'd have a nice puff for a while, then there would be nothing. At just before eight o'clock, the instructors moved us to nearer the docks. The wind was getting even lighter, and the normal for the lake is that it dies off later in the evening.
Not so last night. We sailed two or three times out and back, staying away from what seemed to be a calm area. Then we sailed through the calm. I think we hit a switch. All of the sudden, the wind picked up. What had been nice, easy sailing was suddenly work. Now, that isn't to say it wasn't *fun* work, but it was still work. I had to fight to keep the boat on course, and trimming the mains'l was definitely work. I got to the point of using the cleats -- something I hadn't bothered with before -- to hold the sail while I readied to trim it in even further.
Tacks and gibes were a new experience, as well. I almost lost the boat a couple of times, because the tendency was for me to pull the tiller the wrong way as I crossed sides of the boat. But I managed to stay out of the way of the boom, and kept control enough that we stayed out of the water.
I described a bit last week about the speed of traveling across the water, the boat heeled over, and the two of us hiking out. Within the Coronado, I wasn't forced to hike nearly as often. On the other hand, Joe was having a great time hanging out over the edge of the boat using the trapeeze handles. And we *moved*. Okay, in terms of how fast we were really going, it probably wasn't too fast. I have no way to judge what it was in miles per hour. 10 MPH? 15? I simply can't say. But sitting just inches above the water, with the other side of the boat even closer to the surface, able to see the wake from the boat and feel the spray of the water, I don't care how fast it was in miles per hour, it was *fast*.
And it was fun. A lot of fun.
So we had about thirty minutes of good, strong, wind. Two of the women capsized their boat twice in the time. (It turns out they were tacking, waiting until the tack finished, *then* moving to the other side. That works in light winds, not in anything else.) We docked, pulled the boats out, and de-rigged them.
Once up in the dry dock area, I breathed a *very* large sigh of relief. I didn't go swimming, and I didn't manage to do anything very nasty (like getting hit with a boom) to myself.
It was a good night.