Collegiate sailing

Is a hell of a lot harder than it looks!  Let me begin by clarifying a few things, 1) I'm a cruiser.  I was introduced to sailing by a cruiser.  All of the sailing that I have done over the past two years has been slow, relaxed, and cruiser friendly.  I was taking my time figuring sailing out for myself, at my own pace, by making mistakes and working through them; it was working for me.  2) The closest to racing sailboats that I've ever come is sailing the J/24, which is a racing boat, last year.  I was also once taken on as crew on a friend's boat for a Wednesday night race at my yacht club back home - we were rained out.  I also raced rowing shells for three semester during freshman and sophomore year.

Having confirmed the above facts about both my previous experience and my, suddenly apparent, inexperience allow me to give you a brief recap of my first week on the team which consisted of sailing from 3:30 to dusk (approximately 5:30-6:00) Tuesday and today.

Day 1:

I only knew my friend Emily and her friend Matt, who I had met once at Starbucks.  I carpooled down with Emily, Matt, Meredith, and Kim.  I got dropped off at the Waterfront for practice with the other girls, and Emily and Matt left for the St. Pete yacht club sailing center (where I sail the Ideal 18) to sail sloops (23 foot Sonars).  The coach didn't remember her conversation that Emily had with her about me.  I got put on a Flying Junior (13 ft LOA and 5 ft beam) as crew for Diana who is a new skipper.  We barely had enough wind to get out of the harbor, and then it picked up when we passed the end of the runway at the airport that marks the entrance to the bay.  I almost wet my pants, mostly out of excitement and a little from fear, the first time that I hiked out (when you hang your butt and torso out over the high side of the boat to keep from capsizing), but within a few minutes I was loving it!  Diana and I were hiking out on a puff and almost capsized when the puff disappeared and left us hiking out and therefore throwing the boat off balance.  Diana made it back into the boat in time - I decided to sit in the bay.  Halfway through practice the coach took me out of the FJ and dropped me off on the Sonar.  She thought that "I sail the J" meant "I race the J and know how to fly a spinnaker" (the really big, colorful sail), and I didn't have a clue what I was doing.  I had it partially figured out by the end of practice.  I ended up at the yacht club, and rode home with wet pants.  I had fun, in a scary kind of way and got really confused, but I survived.

Day 2:

I woke up feeling like my limbs were snapped rubber bands and feeling as though an elephant had slept on my back all night.  I survived class, and when it came time to meet my ride I actually knew people, and the coach was expecting me when I arrived, which is always good.  I crewed for Emily, also a new skipper, and our rudder kept coming out of the water no matter what we did to it or how many times we did it.  Due to rudder difficulties we missed the two races that our coach ran, but we did manage to sail into the middle of the fleet, overtake everyone, round the windward mark in the lead, and then sail back out of the fleet only to head up and fix the damn rudder for the tenth time.  I was then traded out of the boat so that Emily could crew for a different skipper.  While in the coach's boat I got to know another novice.  She then got put into a boat, and the coach asked me how much I knew about "the rules of the road" and racing.  I knew most of the rules and, at last, I was given a basic introduction to a racecourse and racing.  I was then put into Matt's boat and headed back to the dock as crew.  On the way back in he taught me how to roll tack, always fun.  I'm not good at it, but at least I know what it is.  I didn't sit in the bay, I didn't die, and I got to ride home with dry pants.  I'd call that an improvement.  I couldn't have asked for more.

On the whole, racing is a lot harder than cruising, and I never knew that anything could happen so fast on a sailboat.  It was a crazy couple of days, but I've managed to survive.  My first time to row in three years is coming up on Saturday, and I learned Tuesday that I am much more out of shape than I thought I was.  It's interesting, I'm always painfully reminded how out of shape I am, but when I'm in shape I'm never reminded of it.  Okay well I'm really tired, probably from sailing, which might explain my lack of details or sentence structure in this post, sorry.  I'm off to bed now, but I'll update again soon with stories from the bow seat of an eight man rowing shell and more details about sailing.  Until then I'll be enjoying my sailboat dreams.