Keelboat I Class

This weekend I went to Lake Thunderbird for keelboat sailing lessons. Friday night we had the classroom portion, where he taught us things like what the different parts of a sail boat are named and how to tie knots. Then we were supposed to do the sailing portion on Sunday. I asked if there was anyway I could sail on Saturday instead - he said I could sail with the Sea Scouts and him on Saturday - sounded like fun to me!

This is Rick Shaw my instructor in the above pic. I need to get a better picture of him, because he looks a bit like a modern day pirate to me, or maybe just very much like a sailor.

There was absolutely no wind on Saturday! We motored out of the marina, and then around some buoys to practice using the tiller. Then we headed out to the middle of the lake and put up our sails. But like I said there was no wind, so we just sat there. It got very boring. So we practiced reefing the main, and we put up the spinnaker in hopes of harnessing more wind which didn't work very well, but gave us something fun to do.

This was the crew on my boat from left to right: Drew - very quiet and inexpressive, Cordell - confident and knowledgable (punk kid was a know-it-all!), and Dave our skipper and instructor for the day and very enjoyable to be around!

Cordell brought out his candy ciggerette pack and we all had a smoke! I was supper excited about it too! I didn't think they made those things anymore - like maybe they contributed to the delinquency of minors or something.

Me at the tiller.

After a couple of hours we dropped our sails and motored back to the marina. Our sister ship was having motor problems and opted to just sail in. By the time we made it to the marina they decided there wasn't enough wind and they needed us to give them a tug. So we went back to haul them in. Our motor was already pitifully slow, and with dragging them as well - it took FOR-EV-ER to get back.