For the Decemberween gift-giving holiday, I got Corrie and I sailing lessons. I. figured with all of her half-jokes about packing the kids onto a sailboat for a year, taht we should probably see if we have the constitution for such a thing.
Because it took a while to work our care for the kids---the lessons were over six solid hours on both a Saturday and a Sunday---we ended up doing Day 1 of the lessons on our anniversary this year, the Solstice, June 21st.
Sailing is...sailing is many things. If you're in a hurry all the time, try sailing. Nothing moves fast. You are, by necessity, just chillin'. We were on a Catalina 30 Tall Rig named the Bella Luna. The Catalina 30 is a very common sail boat (yacht) that can be purchased used for under $20k. The 'Tall Rig' title comes from the mast being taller than normal. Here's a picture I did NOT take:
But that's essentially what it looked like. It has the mainsail coming off the mast and attached to the boom, and the foresail, or jib, in front. It had some volume below decks:
That feels pretty spacious in this picture (maybe lol). There's a triangle-shaped bed way back there and a head on the left of the middle in this scene:
Corrie's at the sink in the kitchenette, looking over the checklist of ship-leaving stuff to do:
And there's what's called a quarter-birth next to the navigation table. Maybe a kid could nap there?
The first day I got all sorts of burned up (because, duh). Here I am at the helm, trying to maintain course on a rather choppy sea outside of the breakers:
The first day was for vocab and getting routines down through repetition. I was given the helm about two minutes into the trip, once we were clear of the slips in the marina, and from that time on, each of the four of us trainees would take 15 minute turns, timed out by Marc, the instructor.
Besides me and Corrie, there was another married couple, Cathy and Ed, with four grown kids and a handful of grandkids. Ed was interested in buying a boat and sailing recreationally (once fully retired after they sell their family business), and had been watching stuff on Youtube. He knew a fair amount, but Corrie and I had finished three of the eight lessons (er, homework) before boarding the ship, and had a pretty decent handle on vocabulary.
We tacked, we trimmed the mainsail, we even reefed the jib. We gybed, but I accidentally gybed a few times, which I learned was very dangerous, and in those conditions (wind at your back, but not super strong) a rookie should never be at the helm. Only, I learned that last night, before closing down the lesson we didn't finish before going to bed the night before the first lesson.
Day 2 was much more mellow. We motored up close to Queens Gate, the opening in the breakwater before the open ocean on the LB Port side (the LA Port has its own opening, called Angels Gate, a few miles away on the San Pedro side), but from there, we stayed inside the breaker, turning off the motor, and hit the wind. We hugged the breaker for a while, and moseyed on to Cabrillo Beach, in San Pedro.
Marc had said that the motoring to Queens Gate and turning north, and then setting to sail, would save us 45 minutes. At the water off Cabrillo Beach, we dropped anchor, and ate some food. It had been smooth sailing all day so far, and here Corrie and I both had a visceral reaction to that phrase: smooth sailing.
Above is a picture of the Long Beach Light, as they call it. It sits at the edge of Queens Gate, and is an icon of maritime Long Beach.
Below was one of the tankers you keep your eye on for, let's say, the entirety of your fifteen minute stretch of being at the helm. As we started to cruise by, I noticed the red-ensign flag, but was able to make out the Indian flag in the canton, meaning it was an Indian ship. I might have even yelped a little, applying something I remembered from my Flags and Logos blog days.
But then, eh, you could easily see it says Mumbai and has Hindi writing. Oh well.
The views of town were obviously nice:
So...sailing.
Imagine sitting in a hot tub. Nice, right? Now, try imagining all the water gone. Um...okay. The fiberglass seating, is, sittable? It isn't fancy and awesome, but you can do it if you need to.
Now imagine two couches, the three seaters like we all had as kids, facing each other. So...if you make those two couches out of fiberglass and put them in the ocean at traveling at 4 miles an hour, that's sailing.
Four or five knots, that was mostly it. We even got to six knots, and that felt fast, but oftentimes the feel has more to do with the direction of the wind.
We did a heave to, which consists of the helmsman spinning the wheel, causing a 180 change in direction and loss of much speed. The plan is to be able to pick up someone who's fallen overboard.
Also, I guess I didn't know how sails work. I thought the wind just pushed you along. That's incorrect, despite how it looks. I was curious how anyone could sail into the wind, or how people could said almost anytime forever, basically. But then I learned the physics.
The sail works just like an airplane's wing, an airfoil. It you put a piece of curved fabric into some windy conditions, the wind will travel over the curved outer side (the windward side) faster than on the leeward (inner) side. This creates lower pressure on the underside---leeward side---which propels the sail, and whatever's attached to it, in the direction it's pointing, regardless of the wind direction.
The only thing is, you can't go directly into the wind. Off to the side just a smidge, sure, and one of the hardest is totally with the wind. That seemed so counterintuitive to me---that with the wind was so hard. That's where you get the accidental gybes. And, because the feeling of speed is due to how the wind feels for you on board, if you're going fully with the wind (a run), but the wind isn't crazy strong, it will feel like you're sitting still, not going anywhere. You can kinda see the water moving by, but the air feels still.
But sailing is like sitting on a hard couch, getting across town about as fast as your buddies can push the couch. If you're used to instantly getting things, getting songs or videos, or getting news, or getting things done, sailing will mess that all up.
It was peaceful if not relaxing. Feeling the connection to every other sailor throughout the ages was heavy.
We may go out again and continue our lessons...you can't rent a sailboat without being a certified skipper!
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