Sailing with Rebekah!

(6^th Consecutive Post!)

(DISCLAIMER: I am probably not actually quoting anyone here. These are the events of the day as my brain tells me they happened.)

Today I went sailing with my Aunt Rebekah.

                We were actually supposed to go sailing yesterday, but the weather report said there was supposed to be rain all afternoon. And then it didn’t rain. Anyway;

                Rebekah is almost as unlearned as I am. She took a course, but it was about fifteen years ago.

So we got there, and there’s a bunch of teen/ young-adult peoples there squirting each other with water guns. Ooookaay. There was also this woman (A mom?) and a kid setting up this weird-looking white boat that looked like if a kayak and a catamaran had a baby.

                We had to wait a bit for them to finish setting up so there would be room for us, but finally we were just like, you know what? Let’s go to the other side of the dock. Yeah. That’ll work.

                So we both started walking off in different directions, she’s going to the boathouse and I’m going to the concrete ramp that leads into the water where the boats are. “Where are you going?” I said to her.

                “I don’t know.” She said. “Where am I going?”

                I pointed in the direction of the boats and said, “The boats are that way.”

She stood at the edge of the dock (because she didn’t want the get too wet. Right.) While I waded into the water up to about my hips to get to the boats tied to the buoys about three-feet deep.

The boats tied to the buoys aren’t entire boats; no sails, ropes or rudders, just the boat-y part.

                Once we had the boat tied up to the dock, we started bringing the parts out from the boathouse one by one. There are a bunch of little yellow sheets in the boathouse that tell you how to put a boat up and tear it down, for people like me with no capacity for remembering processes.

We both needed it.

                We put everything together and waded out, with the boat, into two feet of water.

Then we raised the sail and got on. I got on first, then Rebekah. But she ended up kind of flopping her whole body onto the deck and having to roll around on her side to get to a sitting position. I thought she looked like a seal. She used the words “Beached Whale.”

                So we were all on the boat, and I noticed the boom was a little close to our heads. I said so.

And Rebekah said, “Yeah, we couldn’t raise the sail all the way because the halyard is tangled around the mast.”

                WHY DID SHE NOT MENTION THIS? (I said that, too.)

So we got out and unwound the halyard from around the metal thingy that sticks up from the boat, and lowered the sail. But to untangle the halyard line, we would have to actually take the mast back out and put it back up again properly. Or so we thought.

                “Let me try something.” I said, and I balled up the end of the line, and threw it over the mast, and it was untangled.

                So now we raised the sail again, (which was a lot easier this time.) and got back up onto the boat. This time Rebekah did it with less of a “beached whale” look.

I had the tiller in one hand, and the sheetline in the other, and I was ready to set sail. One small problem; we weren't moving forward.  Rebekah was trying to paddle with her flip-flops, and I was pulling the sheetline in real hard and waving the tiller back and forth, trying to turn in any direction to catch the wind. It’s then that Rebekah notices the rudder isn’t in the water. We forgot to put it down.

So I leaned over really far and stretched my arm, and managed to push it down into the water.

And we finally started moving forward.

                We sailed in between the red and green barrels, and now we were out on the lake. We just sailed around aimlessly for a while, and  Rebekah and I talked. But at some point the wind died down, or we turned into the wind, and we just stopped moving forward. We were caught in this little cove next to the beach, and we were lufting. Rebekah tried to paddle with her flip-flops, and I turned the rudder as hard as I could in one direction and pulled in hard on the sheetline, but we just weren’t moving.

                So we passed the time by singing sea shanties. Of course, I only know the two songs; Blow the Man Down and What do You do with a Drunken Sailor. A while after we were done with the latter, we saw a butterfly fly past us. It was really cool to see a butterfly so far out on the lake like that, and we waved hi to it. And I, who am usually not a very superstitious person, decided it must be good luck.

So I turned the rudder as hard as I could to the other side and pulled in the sheetline, and I thought we were going to get out of irons for a minute there, but then we got caught again.

The butterfly flew past us again, as if to say, “No! No, you didn’t get the message! I’m only good luck if you go that way.” And then we got out of irons.

                Now we were kind of stuck, though, at the end of the lake. The wind was blowing straight across from the other end, so we weren’t going to get anywhere by heading straight. So I decided to try tacking.

                Tacking is when you essentially attempt to head “into” the wind by moving in zigzags up the wind. I told Rebekah I was going to try tacking, picked up some speed, and turned really-really fast and hard to the right. I kept doing this up and down the lake, making steady progress.

On our way there, we stopped by the beach; we sailed as close as we could without breaking any rules, and waved to everyone on the beach. I’m not sure if anyone saw us, but it was fun.

                Somwhere along the way, we saw setting out from this little cove near the beach, two boats; one with a sail that looked like the Italian flag with one extra color, and one whose sail was a jolly roger. Awesome. We kept seeing them all throughout our trip.

                Somewhere in the middle of the lake, we saw Ralph, (Forgive me if I get anyone’s name wrong.) setting out on his big white sailboat. It’s not a sunfish, like ours. It’s a nice fancy one, with a little cabin and everything. Or I’m guessing so, by the appearance of portholes on the sides.

                Ralph is the guy who organizes everything in the boathouse. He’s the one who puts the letters on the buoys for everyone to find, and makes shirts for all the people who work there.

                We waved and shouted “Hey!” (In a friendly, “hey, how you doing?” kind of way.)

He waved back and greeted us. “This is my new teacher!” I said, pointing to Rebekah. “She knows almost as much as I do!”

                Rebekah, who knows how to take a joke, laughed and said, “The last time I sailed was fifteen years ago!”

                We had a short conversation, (which, on the lake, means it lasted about fifteen seconds.) and I told him I had tacked the entire way there, which I am still very proud of.

                Sailing further toward the end of the lake, we noticed a catamaran with huge sails that looked like a sunset sailing around on the lake. I sailed up close and shouted, “Hey! Nice boat!”

                “It looks like a sunset!” Rebekah added. The man in the boat waved cheerfully.

                We soon tacked our way to the end of the lake, where we waved to a man relaxing on his back porch, which was built right on the shore. “It would be nice,” I remarked to Rebekah, “to live so close to the lake. Cool breezes, sparkling water, and you could just look out whenever and see all the sails.”

She agreed.

                There was a fallen tree somewhere along the shoreline. We tried to get closer and see why it had fallen, but we couldn’t see the stump. Soon it was time to tack around for the last time.

                I got the boat in just the right position and built up a little speed, then I turned sharply to the left, and we were sailing up the lake! For a while we were going really fast, and soon we were right in front of the boathouse. I asked Rebekah if we should head back in to the dock.

                “We’ve still got a lot of time left before we have to go in to the dock.” She said. “You can if you want to, but if you’re still having fun we can stay out here for a while.”

                I steered us away from the dock.

We had a blast for a while, going wherever the wind took us and singing songs, and soon I figured it was time to head back in. One problem though; the wind was blowing in entirely the wrong direction. Again.

                We sailed around hopelessly for a while, trying to tack around to the boathouse, but the wind was now blowing from that direction. For a while we thought we were going to make it neatly through the red and green barrels, but we had to turn back away because we were lufting again.

                That’s when we saw Ralph coming up in a sunfish with a bright orange-and-red sail, a woman in the boat with him. (I’ve met her, I just don’t know her name.”

                We explained that we were trying to head back into the dock, and he shouted over the lake, “Just head for barrel three and you’ll be fine!”

                We headed for barrel three and after a lot of tweaking and poking and prodding, we made it in to the dock.

                We took everything apart, and Rebekah insisted we lift the boat up onto the concrete ramp and pull the plug to let the water out. Later, we were told only to do this if the boat was on a trailer, because otherwise it could damage the bottom of the boat.

                We went into the boathouse, put our PFDs back, and grabbed my sunblock.

                “That’s it?” Rebekah said. “We put everything back, and we have your sunblock, right?”

                “Yup.” I said. “We did it!”

                “We did it!” she said. We cheered. Partly because we were proud of ourselves for navigating the treacherous waters of lake Parsippany, and part because we both were (I assume) still a little disoriented from the near death experience. And to top off our day, we headed to McDonalds.

               

                So that’s the story about how I learned how to tack, and to do a lot of other things on my own, mainly because Rebekah’s skills were still to rusty to teach anyone much of anything. We worked together, I helping her to remember, and she helping me to learn. It was great.

                And now, please enjoy some “Deleted Scenes”; Of course, the actual sailing trip lasted for hours, so to make the story “flow” a little nicer, I had to omit a few things. And here they are.

Deleted Scene #1: I held tight to the sheetline and tried my hardest to push the tiller all the way to the right, but it just wouldn’t budge.

                “Come on, Come on!” Rebekah was urging me on, as if that would help to make the turn faster. Though she might have been talking to the boat. I was giving my all with the tiller, even leaning my body against it, but it just wouldn’t budge any farther than I was already pushing it. I looked back to see if there was anything wrong with it, and the tiller was tangled in the sheetline.

I grumbled, and let go of the sheetline so I could turn around and untangle it.
               “The tiller is tangled in the sheetline!” I said to Rebekah, to explain my reason for suddenly ‘taking my foot off the gas pedal’.

I was still grumbling a bit when I got them unhooked from each other. As we sailed away, I remarked to Rebekah; “The tiller and the sheetline are either fighting or making out.” She laughed.

Deleted Scene #2:

We were getting closer to the end of the lake, when I noticed a bug on Rebekah’s  PFD. “Rebekah,” I said. “There’s a bug on your-“

                She didn’t let me finish. “Where? Where?” she said, turning her head from side to side and seemingly trying to wipe the bug off with her ponytail. “Can you reach it?”

                “Not without letting go of the tiller.” I said. “But I can try to hit it with the sheetline.”

                I successfully knocked it off, sending the little bug flying onto the deck. Rebekah turned around to examine what had been crawling around on her back. “Huh.” She remarked. “it looks a little like a grasshopper.”

                “Yeah. “ I said. “only with a rounder butt.”

Deleted Scene #3:

We were sailing along somewhere in the middle of the lake, when we saw the sunset-catamaran doing a turn. “Wow!” Rebekah said, looking at the catamaran. “He’s really leaning into that turn.”

He was. If he was turning any harder, he would have actually been on his side.

Deleted Scene #4:

We were sailing somewhere in the middle of the lake, when the wind picked up really hard for just a second. It was enough to scare me into letting go of the tiller, knock the sheetline out of my hand, and, with a loud “AAAGH!” send me ducking for cover in the cockpit. My knees were resting in something really slimy. Rebekah turned around to check on me.

                “Are you okay?” she said, sort of worried, sort of laughing.

                “Yeah.” I said. “I just have really slimy knees now.”

Seconds later, Ralph sailed around starboard of us and said something like, “Are you alright?” sorry, I don’t remember the exact wording.

                “Yeah,” Rebekah and I both shouted to him.

                “We’re just sailing along,” Rebekah said, laughing, “And suddenly I hear , AAAGH!”

I laughed too. It’s a good thing I know how to laugh at myself, or I would have been extremely pissed about the entire day.

Deleted Scene #4:

We were near the end of the lake, close to the cove where we got stuck, and I was trying my hardest to tack around up to the other end, when we found ourselves sailing straight into the ideal spot for “windage”. I pulled the sheetline in tight, and we were running with the wind!
“Running with the wind” is when your sail is catching as much wind as possible, and you’re going really fast. In our case, the water was coming up over the front of the boat, and we were bumping up and down a bit, too. I leaned my whole body over to the left, to counterbalance it, and we had a blast.

                See, when I first started sailing, it was my goal to go as slowly as possible so that I wouldn’t tip the boat. But now, a few lessons later, I was having a blast going as fast as I could. As my first instructor would say, I had “Less of that scared rabbit look”. He actually said that.

Deleted Scene #5

We were sailing along peacefully, making good progress, when I remarked, “That bug is kind of cute.”

The bug from earlier that we had found on Rebekah’s PFD was still on the boat, hiding out underneath the splash guard.

                “yeah.” Rebekah said. “He is kind of cute.”

                “I wonder how he got on the boat?” I said. “I mean, the boat was all the way out on the water, not connected to land at all.”

                “He could have been on the sail in the boathouse.” Rebekah said.

                “Or maybe he can fly.” I said.

                “Maybe.”

                “When we get back to the dock, we should help him back onto land.” I said.

                “Yeah, let’s.” Rebekah said.

Deleted Scene #6:

We were driving home from the lake, when I remembered something.

                “Oh no!” I said out loud. “We forgot to help the bug onto dry land!”

                “You’re right!”  Rebekah said. “We did forget!”

                “Nooo!”  I lamented. “Our mascot! Well, I just hope he can fly.”

                Rebekah nodded. “Or at least swim short distances.”

And that, my friends, is the end of my sailing day. Do you know this is probably my longest post ever? (not counting fictional stories) 2833 words, people! That’s long.

(6^th Consecutive Post!)