Sailing Lessons in the Bay with Brian  − 22 July, 2006

So pretty much everything that could have gone wrong did.

Brian gave me a call earlier in the week asking me if he could repay a favor with some sailing lessons for me and Steph. "Sure," I said. "I love sailing."

I still had some convincing to do when I got home. Steph had some schoolwork to comit to this weekend with her project partner Kate. I told her to take the morning with me sailing. "It'll be fun, baby. And anyway, it's nice to relax a bit on the weekend."

So Saturday AM comes and we head on out to the bay to meet up with Brian. Brian I know from the Board at Mama's. He's an out-of-work engineer know-it-all, who is much more charming and lovable than Cliff Claven from Cheers. Nevertheless, he does have a tendancy to spout clavenisms on a regular basis. Still, though, Brian's got more to him than trivial bits of knowledge. Brian is an Olympic class swimmer. Since he's been unemployed, Brian's been making his living playing poker and teaching sailing to San Diegans in the evenings and on weekends.

So first of all, there's no parking anywhere the Aquatic Center. I have to park about a quarter mile away. While Brian and Steph are waiting for me to get back from parking, Brian asks Steph where all our stuff is. Turns out I missed the memo about having to bring a swimsuit and plenty of sunscreen. The sunscreen we did back at home. But I thought this would be a liesurely sail not a wet event. So Steph decided to wear white linen pants and lacking any nude undies, of course went commando.

So the lesson starts with a classroom lesson replete with a chalkboard. We learn about basic sailing maneuvers like tacking and jibing. Then we move out to the boat and get started. It takes us one lap to the end of the smallest part of the bay when we try our first tack and the boat capsizes. The winds are strong and Brian did predict that this was going to happen. Steph and I are flaoting in the water while Brian gets on the keil to tip the boat upright again. As he does that, the main sail catches a gust of wind and throws itself back over. Brian goes tumbling off the back and smacks his head on the keil in the process. Ouch. When the boat goes back over it turtles this time, meaning that the mast sank deep enough to get stuck in the san at the bottom of the bay. So we have to wait for one of the other instructors to come by to relay the message back to the dock master to send a whaler out to get us and tow the sail boat back up.

So we get back on the boat and are sailing back to the Acquatic center because the boat's just going too fast on this windy day and Brian wants to take off the jib (i.e. the front sail). We make it back to the Aquatic center to discover that the main sail had been tried around the rudder accidentally by the last group that was using the boat, which is why the boat was catching so much wind.

So we take off the jib and head out again. Only this time, the boat won't power at all. As it turns out, Brian is used to different boats and different conditions, so he didn't know that taking off the jib would render the boat powerless. Aparently that's not the case for all two-sail boats. So there we are adrift and Brian has to put his Olympic swimming skills to use by swimming back to the shore and grabbing a whaler to tow us back in with. A few minutes later he motors on out to us. We throw him a line and we're moored to his boat. He goes to turn his engine back on only to discover that the whaler is out of gas. Both tanks.

So Brian now has to swim back in to not only grab another whaler to get our sailboat back to the center, but he has to ask another instructor to come out and tow back the whaler out of gas. Only now, we've difted even further out so Brian has an even longer swim back.

It takes a good 15 minutes before we see any action. Then Brian comes back with the dock master. We all get towed back.

We're back on land and Brian asks us what we want to do. I can see that Steph is a little battle-weary. Myself, I come from the if-you-get-knocked-off-a-horse-get-back-on school of thought. So I plea to go out one more time and get some actual sailing in.

Well that's what we did. We finally got the boat to work and it was half-an-hour of fun. Not exactly the way it was intended, but the experience is quite frankly the only way I would have it.

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