Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Thought Exercise for would-be Sailors

Try this mental exercise with a spouse, significant other, or potential sailing partner:

It's the middle of June and you're in a sixteen-foot open dinghy on a smallish lake with only a couple of small fishing boats sharing the lake. It's partly cloudy, a nice little breeze is blowing about 5 to 7 mph, temps are mid 70s, and the water is still pretty cool in the mid 60s. The breeze comes up quickly and becomes rather gusty before you can get sails down or get to shore and you both get dumped in the water and spend several minutes getting soaking wet before you get things more or less back under control with the main roughly reefed and the jib down.

Your spouse:
(a) calls the parks rangers to arrest you for reckless endangerment and is last heard debating whether to call the meanest divorce lawyer in the state or just get it over with and hire a pistolero from Juarez;

(b) tells you the boat is for sale, mutters about having to spend a few days shopping to replace ruined clothes and shoes, and gives you dark looks that tell you that the next few days are not going to be the least bit fun;

(c) says you're not sailing again until you've had lessons or hired a captain to teach you both;

(d) tells you to leave the helming to her from now on after telling you which mistakes you made that caused the capsize;

(e) giggles, whoops, and hollers and tells you to get the ^$*$&*! sails up before the wind dies down too much so she can show you some tricks and says she's buying a really fast, aggressive racing catamaran with trapeze hiking harnesses and a huge spinnaker so you can both get better workouts and work a faster learning curve.; or

(f) ___________________________________________

2 Comments:

At 9:48 PM, September 26, 2012, Blogger bonnie said...

F: TQ and I checked the forecast, left the dinghies at home, and went paddling, 'cause we're better kayakers than sailors. Dude! Surf's UP!

 
At 11:44 PM, September 30, 2012, Blogger Pat said...

On the water is a good place to be.

 

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