I started taking sailing lessons through the Mountaineers in April. When I thought about how I wanted to change my life this year, and what I wanted in my life, sailing was the first thing that came to mind.
It's taken some effort of self-propulsion to actually do it. To sign up as a first-time Mountaineers member. To sign up for and commit to the sailing class. To attend all of the class sessions, even though I was going through some things at the time that made me rather just hide away in my apartment cave. Going to the classes, a large room full of many strangers, wasn't easy. But I kept at it, and ended up making a couple of potential new friends in the process.
I've actually been out on a boat four or five times so far! But to date I am beginning to wonder whether I have bad sailing mojo (or maybe just no sailing mojo). There hasn't been any wind! And no whale sightings, either, though the skipper I've sailed with the most, out of the Everett Marina, has reported seeing them numerous times in recent weeks.
Today's sail was a bit of a sit 'n spin. There was no air moving. But there was current, or tide, plus wake from passing powerboats. Several times we found ourselves in a boat that only wanted to turn in circles in one place. That was a new experience for me! The highlight of the trip today had to be the fourteen (yes, 14!) Bald Eagles we counted along the jetty as we left the marina.
We're going out again on Wednesday, in the evening. I'm hoping evening wind will be different from Sunday morning wind. I've only been out on a Wednesday evening once before, and it was very calm for the first part of the sail, but then a squall started chasing us and we got quite a bit of good air across the sails! That was exhilirating, if a little unnerving because it was my first time out as well as my new friend Donna's first time out.
The skipper was out on deck hoisting the sails with the wind buffeting him quite hard. If he'd gone overboard, no way would Donna and I have known what to do to get him back. Bye bye, Skipper. Poor Donna was at the helm, trying to keep the boat steady, and she kept asking me, "What do I DO?" I kept reassuring her that the skipper would tell her to do something differently if he wanted her to, that we just had to trust him. I sure hoped I was right. But I figured he probably wanted to go overboard a lot less even than we wanted him to. So, I trusted him. Wasn't so sure how wise he was to trust US, though. :P
The second time we sailed with him, I had to laugh. As we were prepping the boat to leave the marina to head out to open water, I caught the lyrics of a song he was playing on the boat's stereo system. A woman's voice was singing rather hauntingly, "I will go down with this ship." It's a beautiful song, by Dido, I later learned. But it was a rather disconcerting send-off song by which to set sail. :)
