Sailing Plan Mach I
Those who tell you a photograph doesn't lie are clearly not photographers.
Photoshop and digital photo manipulation notwithstanding, photographers have always understood that a picture may be worth a thousand words, but those thousand words may have been torn from the middle of War and Peace, and without the other four hundred fifty nine thousand words to provide context, the text, while masterfully composed, tells us woefully little about what came before and what occurred after. In other words, a photograph captures only a small slice of reality, not reality itself. What lies beyond frame is as important as that which we have chosen to apply our focus.
So it is with my grand schemes. When I get excited about something, I often set my focus only upon the extraordinary flower while blurring the dung-heap upon which it grows. Now, I may be overly critical in this particular instance, but it is illustrative of how my mind operates, and so, with my selective focus creating a virtual tilt-shift image of my sailing fantasy, the mach 1 version of my plan went into effect.
The plan was extraordinarily simple; I would buy a boat, plunk it in the water and head out to sea.
I started looking at older 27'-36' keel boats, but after seeing a few and actually stepping on board, the arterial collections of lines passing through confusing arrays of blocks and clamps, the enigmatic cables running twenty feet in the air forward and aft, port and starboard, the unknown function of boom-vangs, outhauls and cunninghams, forced me to pause. But it was the fear docking one of these large boats in a sliver of a slip without destroying the neighboring boats or smashing the hull into a pier forced me to the realization that boats of this size may be a little beyond my (total lack of) ability. Further, mooring fees for boats in this size range was cost prohibitive - a little more than I had intended to spend. I haven't mentioned that I remain the primary wage earner and the financial rock upon which my family of four relies. So dropping two-hundred and fifty dollars a month to dock a boat, I decided, wasn't exactly a wise choice. If could find mooring for under two hundred a month, perhaps I could rationalize it, but not a dime more. Ensuring that others are not negatively impacted by one's pursuit of dreams is sometimes a struggle, but if we truly love them, we find a balance.
And so I started looking at boats in the 20-22' range.
At about this time I had put the idea of attending sailing classes on the scales and ultimately decided to pursue ASA certification. After careful consideration, it occurred to me that ASA certification would be the ideal path. First, I could quickly build skills (speed is an imperative to the Aging Mariner), and second, it would make easier for me to charter a boat in the event that I was without my own.
ASA 101 Basic Keel Boat Certification
The local sailing school offered the ASA 101 course in 17 hours over a single weekend. It included a set of online lectures and assigned reading from the ASA publication, Sailing Made Easy. These were to be completed before the long sailing weekend. Although at first I was completely lost, it didn't take long for the foreign language of the sailor to conceptually fall into place. I studied for the written exam like I did during my all too short college career - with ferocity. For four weeks I left work and did little more than read, re-read and watch, re-watch the book and videos for the ASA class. I practiced knots until they were second nature. I built PowerPoint and Captivate presentations that quizzed me on terms and concepts. I was a sailing study machine. I read so much that the eye strain forced me to see an optometrist (which resulted in obtaining my first pair of glasses - geez, I didn't realize that my vision had declined so much!).
The first day of class consumed ten hours on a Saturday, nine of which were on the water. I had no way of knowing how difficult it would be to convert my conceptual knowledge to practice, but to say it was a challenge is an understatement of epic proportions. I could barely apply the stand on/give way rules from the deck of the little 24' boat we had taken out on Commencement Bay. And attempting a Figure Eight Crew Overboard drill was like asking a box of Denny's Kids Menu Crayons to create a Bosch triptych. I was taken off guard by the energy required to trim the sails in even moderate winds, and the extent to which sailing was as much a mental exercise as it was a physical one.
By the end of the day I felt brutalized, emotionally, mentally and physically. Just working up the energy to get from my driveway into the house was like lifting burlap bags full of wet cement. As I laid in my bed that evening, I wondered privately whether this was something I really wanted to pursue.
I woke early Sunday with a renewed spirit. The mental and physical impact of the day before had subsided and I was ready to get out on the water and earn my certs. But the weather had other plans.
Arriving at the sailing school at ten a.m., the world was peculiarly still. The leaves on the trees were motionless. Across the bay, smoke rose vertically from smokestacks. To write the following words seems like an exercise in the obvious, but no sailing would happen that day. However, we were able to complete the written assessment and the knot test. I blew one of the written assessment questions by filling in the F bubble when there were only A, B, C, and D choices. Idiot. I'm still not sure what happened. The other missed question was one I genuinely didn't know, but ninety-eight out of one hundred 'aint so bad. The knots offered no resistance whatsoever. Aced. Done.
Except for the on the water exam.
Those who tell you a photograph doesn't lie are clearly not photographers.
Photoshop and digital photo manipulation notwithstanding, photographers have always understood that a picture may be worth a thousand words, but those thousand words may have been torn from the middle of War and Peace, and without the other four hundred fifty nine thousand words to provide context, the text, while masterfully composed, tells us woefully little about what came before and what occurred after. In other words, a photograph captures only a small slice of reality, not reality itself. What lies beyond frame is as important as that which we have chosen to apply our focus.
So it is with my grand schemes. When I get excited about something, I often set my focus only upon the extraordinary flower while blurring the dung-heap upon which it grows. Now, I may be overly critical in this particular instance, but it is illustrative of how my mind operates, and so, with my selective focus creating a virtual tilt-shift image of my sailing fantasy, the mach 1 version of my plan went into effect.
The plan was extraordinarily simple; I would buy a boat, plunk it in the water and head out to sea.
I started looking at older 27'-36' keel boats, but after seeing a few and actually stepping on board, the arterial collections of lines passing through confusing arrays of blocks and clamps, the enigmatic cables running twenty feet in the air forward and aft, port and starboard, the unknown function of boom-vangs, outhauls and cunninghams, forced me to pause. But it was the fear docking one of these large boats in a sliver of a slip without destroying the neighboring boats or smashing the hull into a pier forced me to the realization that boats of this size may be a little beyond my (total lack of) ability. Further, mooring fees for boats in this size range was cost prohibitive - a little more than I had intended to spend. I haven't mentioned that I remain the primary wage earner and the financial rock upon which my family of four relies. So dropping two-hundred and fifty dollars a month to dock a boat, I decided, wasn't exactly a wise choice. If could find mooring for under two hundred a month, perhaps I could rationalize it, but not a dime more. Ensuring that others are not negatively impacted by one's pursuit of dreams is sometimes a struggle, but if we truly love them, we find a balance.
And so I started looking at boats in the 20-22' range.
At about this time I had put the idea of attending sailing classes on the scales and ultimately decided to pursue ASA certification. After careful consideration, it occurred to me that ASA certification would be the ideal path. First, I could quickly build skills (speed is an imperative to the Aging Mariner), and second, it would make easier for me to charter a boat in the event that I was without my own.
ASA 101 Basic Keel Boat Certification
The local sailing school offered the ASA 101 course in 17 hours over a single weekend. It included a set of online lectures and assigned reading from the ASA publication, Sailing Made Easy. These were to be completed before the long sailing weekend. Although at first I was completely lost, it didn't take long for the foreign language of the sailor to conceptually fall into place. I studied for the written exam like I did during my all too short college career - with ferocity. For four weeks I left work and did little more than read, re-read and watch, re-watch the book and videos for the ASA class. I practiced knots until they were second nature. I built PowerPoint and Captivate presentations that quizzed me on terms and concepts. I was a sailing study machine. I read so much that the eye strain forced me to see an optometrist (which resulted in obtaining my first pair of glasses - geez, I didn't realize that my vision had declined so much!).
The first day of class consumed ten hours on a Saturday, nine of which were on the water. I had no way of knowing how difficult it would be to convert my conceptual knowledge to practice, but to say it was a challenge is an understatement of epic proportions. I could barely apply the stand on/give way rules from the deck of the little 24' boat we had taken out on Commencement Bay. And attempting a Figure Eight Crew Overboard drill was like asking a box of Denny's Kids Menu Crayons to create a Bosch triptych. I was taken off guard by the energy required to trim the sails in even moderate winds, and the extent to which sailing was as much a mental exercise as it was a physical one.
By the end of the day I felt brutalized, emotionally, mentally and physically. Just working up the energy to get from my driveway into the house was like lifting burlap bags full of wet cement. As I laid in my bed that evening, I wondered privately whether this was something I really wanted to pursue.
I woke early Sunday with a renewed spirit. The mental and physical impact of the day before had subsided and I was ready to get out on the water and earn my certs. But the weather had other plans.
Arriving at the sailing school at ten a.m., the world was peculiarly still. The leaves on the trees were motionless. Across the bay, smoke rose vertically from smokestacks. To write the following words seems like an exercise in the obvious, but no sailing would happen that day. However, we were able to complete the written assessment and the knot test. I blew one of the written assessment questions by filling in the F bubble when there were only A, B, C, and D choices. Idiot. I'm still not sure what happened. The other missed question was one I genuinely didn't know, but ninety-eight out of one hundred 'aint so bad. The knots offered no resistance whatsoever. Aced. Done.
Except for the on the water exam.
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