by Roger » Thu Mar 16, 2006 1:22 am
so it may as well be me. A few weeks ago my wife and I took a one week vacation at an all inclusive in the Greater Antilles. There were kayaks, hobies, and X-14 for use on the beach. I took an X-14 out. Let me describe this motorcycle... no unicycle of a sailboat. 14 feet long, about 4 feet wide, one sail and flippy as hell! On watching most other users for a part of the afternoon it was not hard to determine that this was a tender boat. Much of the time the occupant was trying to get back into in from the water, after it had dumped its contents and stayed over on its side.
Well DS sailor that I am, I figured that I should be able to manage something of this calibre, even tame it!
Out I went, with my tilley hat on, but not strapped on. The fickle wind near shore played havoc with my intended course and I found myself gybing a number of times to maintain my heading out away from shore. One of these times, the boom caught me from behind and knocked my hat in the water. I therefore started to negotiate tighter and tighter circles around my hat to recover it, each time, tacking or gybing as the need presented itself. My wife seeing this, was assuming that all sailing skills were left at more northerly latitudes, and started taking pictures of my ineptitude, until I recovered my hat, set a course due west and enjoyed a wonderful yet boisterous sail.
I had to do a lot of sliding around from side to side on my knees however, and because this was a beach boat, there was some fine sand onboard. I ended up with matching apple sized abrasions on both knees, like a 5 year old kid learning to ride a bike with skinned knees.
I'm not sure my wife believes me, when I tell her that I was in full control the whole time, but as for the skinned knees, its a bit harder to explain to others that as a 50+ year old, I acquired them playing in a small boat.
But I didn't dump that damn boat!!!