Wednesday 15 May 2013

My independence

In one of the many books I've read or flipped through in an attempt to get my head around this "sailing" thing, it said that the two things a woman on a cruising boat can do to ensure her independence are: a) learn how to use the dingy on her own, and b) learn some of the local language.

So there has been a lot of dingy rowing in my life these last two weeks.

And in Spanish: to row a boat -> llevar una barca remando 

It used to be that when the Captain and I went in the dingy together, he rowed and I harassed him about the direction we were going, or gazed at the stars, or watched for fish.  Now, we row together, side by side on the bench, each with one oar.  Oh, the romance, the romance.

Another accomplishment of my independence that took place recently involved the J22 sailboats.  You've heard lots about these boats on this blog, as I've raced in them for the last year and a half as crew.  On Saturday, the races were designated as "ladies on the helm," which meant that the boats that are all usually skippered by men had to find a willing victim to steer the boat.  And that was me!  I was very nervous, since these boats use a tiller instead of a wheel like Diva, and the wind was probably around 15 knots when we started, but I figured out which way to push the tiller to make the boat go in the direction I wanted and the wind died down a bit after the first race.  Out of 6 boats, I had two third place finishes and a second place.  Not bad for a novice!   

Trip update: Jobs are still getting crossed off the to-do list in preparation for our trip.  The departure date is Monday, May 28th, weather permitting.  Destination: still planned for Cartagena, Colombia.

The pictures below are from our sail to Negril, two weekends ago.

While sailing down to Negril we went through a rainstorm, but the sail back was BEA-U-TI-FUL.

The sunset turned all our sails pink!

And gave Cpt. Phil and Nigel are rosy pink tinge too.  Nigel is going to come with us as crew to Colombia.

And then the pink turned to orange, then red, then the sun sank out of sight.