The family acquired a Manly Junior sail boat from a work mate of Steve's a couple of years ago.
Steve and Sarah have attempted to sail it based on Steve's flimsy memory of sailing as a child. Needless to say, after a few disastrous attempts later they gave up the venture. My dream of being chauffeured around the harbour in a yacht while sipping champagne looked like it was not going to materialise.
Steve and Sarah still nursed the driving ambition to learn to sail, so recently contacted Urunga Sail Training Club about their sailing course that they run.
http://www.yachting.org.au/db/clubdisplay.asp?ID=516680&Action=Display&MenuID=Clubs+and+Classes%2F6%2F0%2CThe+OnBoard+Program%2F10559%2F0%2CWhat_is_OnBoard%3F%2F10612%2F0%2CParticipants%2F11668%2F6236
Rather than let the two of them head off every weekend for fun and frivolity whilst leaving me home to tend baby and home, I decided to throw my hat into the ring too.
Almost $1000 later, the three of us are signed up for a sailing course, that begins next week, and a family club membership for the season.
Sarah and I got ourselves kitted out yesterday with water shoes, long sleeve rashies and gardening gloves. With forecast temperatures of 33 degrees today, we thought we'd pop down to Urunga and have a go at the social sailing that the club runs every Sunday.
Sarah got first go in the boats. I get the distinct impression that they hold very high hopes for Sarah. (Not so high hopes for me). Sarah is a natural, well she looked like it to me who was watching from shore. I stayed on shore to mind Ellie, who at 8 months loved discovering sand. Handful after handful was shoved into her mouth. This was not the cleanest looking sand either. There was no way to stop her, so before long she looked like a monster from the deep with brown sand dribbling down her chin. I'm sure she managed to eat more sand in that sitting than she eats food at meal times. It's going to be interesting to see the results out the other end when I change her nappy tomorrow.
I took Ellie down to the water's edge to clean her up a bit. She adored the water too and carried right on scooping up handfuls of muddy sand and shoving it in her mouth. Maybe it was the salty tang she enjoyed. I have heard that I should avoid salting Ellie's food so that she doesn't develop a taste for salt and also because it is supposed to be hard on her kidneys. Well with baby led weaning philosophy stating that babies know what food they want and if we provide them with a variety they will naturally choose what they need, Ellie is obviously in need of sludgy river sand, mmmmm.
As is always the case when you try to time these things, right when it was my turn to go in the boat, Ellie was in need of a feed and a sleep. Oh well, I knew she wasn't starving after that belly full of sand, and I had complete faith in Sarah's ability to rock her or walk her in the pram if she needed settling. There was nothing to hold me back. So I got to have my turn, my very first go in a sailing boat.
Doug kindly, perhaps I should say patiently, offered to take me out in the Tazer. A two - three person boat. My job was to sit up front and manage the jib, whilst ducking the boom and counter weighting the boat if we tipped up too high. The main goal being not to capsize. Doug gave me instructions peppered with lots of sailing terms while he did all the hard work and kept us on the move. All those fancy sailing terms were like a foreign language and I just let them swirl around my head and wash off me, confident that by the time I finished the sailing course I'd know all of them. So we jibed and we tacked and we did some other things too. I remembered to duck at the appropriate times and deluded myself into believing that I was getting the hang of the jib rope.
Then we swapped positions. Eeek, me to the back of the boat, in charge of steering, and Doug up front managing the jib, and all the other fancy things he was doing from the back that magically makes the boat go. Steering a boat is great fun, but prone to bring out a spot of dyslexia. Doug kept telling me to look forwards, not back, as each time I looked back we invariably ended up off course. We ended up off course a fair bit of the time when I was looking forward too.
Eventually I got sacked after some miss understanding about which way to turn. The boat floundered and Doug needed to scoot back and remedy the situation. As we pulled in towards shore, he declared that based on our sailing abilities, Sarah had better be skipper and I had better stick with crew. Which was probably a really nice way to say that I sucked. That just means that come the start of the sailing course next week, my learning curve is going to be steeper than Sarah's, and I have an excuse to be slack, and let all the others do the work while I relax, sip champagne and dream.
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