Poo-Poo Platter

Yesterday I went out sailing for the very first time. My buddy Tim loves sailing, and he invited me, Chris (one of his co-workers), and Megan (Chris’s wife) to go sailing for the day. Tim had invited me a couple of times before, but I had prior engagements. I definitely wanted to take advantage of it this time, because I knew the weather was going to be nice and I really didn’t want to spend the day at home.

We started at Shilshole Bay Marina at around 9 AM and slowly made our way across Lake Washington to Eagle Harbour. The weather was very calm during the morning, so we moved along using only the motor. The lack of wind was actually a good time for us to get acquainted with the boat, learn to move around without falling in the water or tripping over ropes, and (for me at least) to get some photos of everyone.

We arrived at Eagle Harbour around lunch time, and we spent quite some time looping around looking for a place to dock. After circling around for what seemed like an hour, we finally found an opening on the guest mooring. We tied up the boat and then headed into town to grab some lunch at the Harbour Public House. I had pork quesadillas and ice tea, a very refreshing combo for a day that was getting progressively hotter.

We strolled around town a little bit to walk off the lunch and do a bit of sight-seeing before heading back to the boat. The wind was starting to pick up a bit, so we decided to prepare the sails. Once we got out on the main water, we raised the sails, turned off the motor, and started to sail.

The wind still wasn’t very strong, so we didn’t go very fast, but it was a great opportunity for Tim to teach us more about how to to actually sail. Megan had learned how to sail when she was little, but Chris and I were complete newbies. We had a couple of stumbles as we tried to get things working, but no one fell over, and we didn’t break anything, so it was all good. I did bump my head on the boom once and hit my calf on some sharp points, but there was no permanent damage.

As we were sailing, we had a few tense moments as we tried to get out of the paths of cruise ships, the ferries, and a very large container ship. There was also one sudden gust of wind that put all of us on high alert. The sails picked up so much wind that it leaned to one side very abruptly and had all of us scrambling to hold on. I was sitting near the middle of the boat and had my legs hanging into the cabin. The sudden shift in orientation threw me off balance, and the only way I kept from falling over was wrapping several ropes around my legs.

After a bit of struggling, we managed to kill some of the power to the sails when Megan had the sense of mind to lower the front sail (I can’t remember what it’s called). After we righted ourselves, Chris remembered that the boat was designed to not tip over. We all felt kind of stupid panicking so much.

Everything after that was pretty much smooth sailing. The wind got stronger as the day went on, so we had some great sailing weather. There was also more splashing as we hit larger waves and picked up more speed, but there were no more stressful moments. We eventually made it back to Shilshole Bay Marina around 7:30 PM and finished up my first sailing experience by cleaning up the boat.

Yesterday was an incredibly fun day. I got to spend time on the lake, I got to be in the sun, and I learned how to sail. That’s a hell of a lot better than sitting indoors all day. The only mishaps for me were a bump on the head, a relatively sore bruise on my leg, and a tiny bit of sunburn on my scalp. Not too bad considering I’ve never actually done any sailing.

Finally, what day out for me would be complete without my trusty D70 in hand. I was extremely trigger happy when I wasn’t working with the rest of the crew, probably to the annoyance of everyone else on the boat. But I did get some fun photos. The full set of images is available for viewing up on my Flickr photostream.

| sailing