sailing practice

today's outing was 1/2 racing practice and 1/2 pleasure sail. pleasure sail last week was beer-on-board, pleasure sailing this week was stop-for-beer. both fine choices.

racing practice was also good stuff: i worked the mast position again, pulling lines. i made a huge mistake dousing the spinnaker and pinned the jib sheet, but to my credit, i didn't do that the second or third time i doused the kite. in other words: learning took place.

i'm still slow as a snail hoisting the sails. i don't know if i can claim to be learning on that. the halyards are slippery, and though i'm strong, i'm not fast. but today's practice helped a lot with knowledge, confidence, and balance. i'm getting better.

The Liver says he doesn't really do racing, only pleasure sails. I told the Captain I might adopt The Liver's attitude if he (the Captain) keeps yelling at me. I was joking but don't tell him I said that.

We had a brief bit of actual racing -- another J24 was out and we raced each other for a bit. They were flying a smaller headsail than us but still smoked us. I confirmed later on with Uproar that this means what I thought it meant: we suck. Not only that, but of the 4 people on the other boat, only one was a sailor, the others were just rail meat. Not even rail meat: they never hiked at all.

That said, one of the reasons I didn't stick with sailing the first time around is because I wanted someone more competent than me on the boat, in command. The Captain isn't just "more competent than me", he's extremely competent. Cool headed, confidence inspiring, and all the good stuff you want in someone skippering your boat. We may not be the fastest boat on the water, but I'm fairly convinced that when the going gets tough, I'm on the right boat.

Maybe I'm just easily fooled ;)

After practice we picked up a friend of Uproar's and went for our pleasure cruise. Uproar made sangwiches and we ate them, despairing loudly that there was no beer. To rectify this, we moored (possibly illegally) at some crummy commercial dock and Doc and The Liver disembarked and walked to a nearby liquor store. They came back with What's Needed For Pleasure Sailing, and off we went again.

we saw one of these and that was pretty cool. i don't think i've seen a double-mast catamaran before. there were a ton of sailboats on the water today, though few got the pre-lunch start that we had, and even fewer docked for a beer run.

in the past, when doing a friday sail, i've been wiped out on saturday. this bodes ill for my ride tomorrow, but i feel rather quite peppy at the moment, so maybe i can hold on to that and make it work tomorrow.

although this is my fourth to sixth time on this boat, i have not sailed with the same crew twice. meeting people! it strains my nickname imagination.