It has been a while since I put up a post, but it’s not for lack of activity. Actually, lots of real-life activity keeps me away from the internet, so maybe a lack of posting is a good sign. We’ll just go with that.
Yesterday, I left work early to meet Jason for our very first sailing class. We decided a few months ago to sign up with Simply Sailing for their intro course, which consists of three evenings in a classroom and three full days out on the water, as I explained in this post. Yesterday was the first classroom session. Our instructor Christof covered such lovely topics as hypothermia, basic knots, and reading tide and current charts (all vital knowledge, for sure).
His version of the figure eight knot goes like this: “You make a smiley face, then you strangle him, and poke him in the eye.” It actually works quite well and I like his morbid sense of humour. We have a different instructor for on the boat, so we will see how he measures up to Christof’s glowing first impression of the school. (By the way, several weeks ago he dropped off our books at our house instead of mailing them, since he lives close by. More brownie points for the sailing community!)
The people in our evening class will be out on the boat on Saturday, not with us on Sunday. However, it seems like there will be a third person on our day, which will be nice from a social perspective, but it would’ve been awesome to have basically private lessons.
No, it isn’t…
Unfortunately, Jason works until midnight on Saturday and we have to be at Granville Island docks at nine in the morning on Sunday. Not fun. This weekend will be particularly trying, since the clocks go forward for Daylight Savings, so we will miss an hour of sleep. Oh, well. I’m sure he will survive, plus we can always go back to shore a bit early if we get enough practice in for the day, according to Christof.
We are both super excited to get out on the water, even though the forecast is predicting crappy weather for the weekend. I went out and bought a Wetskins rain jacket and pants set from Canadian Tire for $69.99. A lot of sailors have mentioned it on forums or blogs, and it seems much more reliable than the cheap vinyl outfit I got for refloating our boat. I don’t think this one will shred at the first touch!
