Sailing

A few weeks ago i was sitting on the beach with a friend and out of nowhere she asked what that green buoy was out there in the water. I answered her saying that it marked the channel, so any boats know where the deepest and safest part to sail is. I told her that the way you interpret the buoys is to use the alliteration "Red Right Returning", so when you're returning to port then you want to keep the red buoy on your right and that way you'll stay in the deepest part. It was at the moment that i realized i wanted to really learn to sail. Sailing has always been somewhat of an interest to me, but i hadn't been that motivated to pursue it until now. A couple of years ago my mom had a tiny little sailboat and i learned to sail that, but it was very simple, very small and wasn't really much of a learning experience. However, my mother's boyfriend Rick  is a huge sailor and has a much larger and much more complex sailboat and he has offered to teach me how to sail it and we (my mom, Rick and I) might be entering in a sailing race later in the summer! Saturday the 13th was my first sailing lesson and i got to put all my previous knowledge about sailing and the water to use, plus i learned a bunch of new things! During the lesson i knew a lot of terminology like starboard (right), port (left), main sail (sail attached to the mast), the jib (the other sail located more towards the front of the boat and is at an angle towards the main sail), tacking (the process of getting the wind on the other side  of the wind so you can turn), but there was still lots i needed to learn, like when the right time to tack is and how to work your way somewhere when the wind is against you and who has right of way in the water and how to use the telltales (telltales are almost little streamers that show you when to adjust the tiller so you get the best wind, there's one telltale on each side of the sail and if they are flying parallel to each other then your sail has the right amount of wind and lift and whatnot, but if one is flopping around you have to adjust yourself accordingly). On Saturday i mainly just kept my eyes on the sail and tried to get a hang of using the tiller (apparently i'm pretty intuitive!), but hopefully next week ill be able to do some more. This is has been a great learning experience for me and it was really fun! although, i did manage to get a really terrible sunburn, so next time i'll have to be a little bit more careful.