One signs up to take a sailing adventure and then realizes that one needs more skills to be a contributing member of a sailing expedition. This led us on a search for sailing schools. The one that we selected was a six day program located in San Diego. It helped that our son Ryan lived here and was keen to take the course with us. Not to be left out and the fact it was in San Diego, our younger son Jeff also joined the crew. The course was divided into three sections. Each section was 2 days in length. The first two days were basic sailing, the next two were costal sailing and the last two days were called bareboat charters.
When we signed up for the course we were sent a textbook for each section. We quickly realized that sailors have quite the lingo and we had a lot to learn. The books were our main reading material pre course.
We even took the books on our kayaking trip!
Who knew how many new words we were going to learn. Reading about sailing is interesting, but we looked forward to practice on the water.
Finally it was time, Don and I opted to live aboard the boat while Jeff and Ryan opted to stay at Ryans house.
We boarded the boat the night before the course started. Tomorrow we would meet our instructor and see what we had learned from the books.
The vessel was a 37 foot Beneteau Oceancis
This was our home for the next 6 nights, moored at Cabrillo Marina on Harbor Island .
The weather didn’t disappoint! Perhaps a bit more wind would have been nice, but we had plenty to learn the basics.
Captain Clint showed up around 9:00 and we were soon learning the procedure of checking the boat for departure, basic sailing terminology and of course raising the sails.
Patience was definitely a virtue of our captain! By the look on my face, this was serious business.
We all took turns being the helms person.
Don looks pretty serious as well.
Ryan took it all in stride! and could tell he had done this before.
Jeff was quite comfortable as well.
After several days we were all feeling a bit more relaxed and it showed on the faces.
Today was our coastal sail where we learned about coastal navigation and using the compass. Unfortunately we had do more motoring than we wanted. Our course was challenging due to crab pots and kelp, but we managed!
Don enjoyed this day as well. We appreciated the automatic pilot.
We tried to sign up for a sailing course in Alaska, but I think we all enjoyed the weather here!
Most of our sailing was done here everyday with the city being in our view.
We also felt quite safe as the navy definitely has a lot of presence here.
A submarine was escorted in to its dock.
This was quite the vessel… We stayed out of its way.
With wind filling our sails, we did man overboard drills, lots of tacking work, docking practice, heave to, reefing and by the end of the course we were mostly adept at line handling. Some more than others!
Fun!
The last evening sunset.
A special thanks to Beth for packing our lunches every day.
And perhaps best off all, even better than we all passed, we got to spend a week with the kids!