The week of 4 July to 8 July was spent instructing six 13 to 17 year olds on Start Keelboat, Basic Crew and Basic Cruising on behalf of
National One Design Sailing Academy.
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| Boat Basin at ABYC |
The crew consisted of...
Crew 'A'
- Dabinaire Dan
- Close Hauled Jake
- The Big 'D' Devan - Skipper
Crew 'B'
- I Don't Want To Do It Madi
- Crash Jessie Crash
- Cannonball Jack - Skipper
We had two separate crews where everyone rotated through all roles including Helm, Mainsail Trimmer and Foresail Trimmer. When not on watch, the relief crew listened carefully, learned from the other crew or sprang into action to help out as required!
The winds were fairly light all week but we got a good amount of sailing in on top of a couple of chalk talks on various topics everyday. The photos following seem to catch mostly ashore fun stuff but I can assure that a lot of quality time was spent on the water running various points of sail, crew overboard drills and heaving to with reefing and shaking out of the main sail.
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| Rigging the Boat for Departure From the Slip |
On Wednesday, Day 3, we had a real life lesson on going aground when we touched bottom and got stuck in the mud as we left the boat slip basin of ABYC. It was a fairly gentle grounding as we did not feel anything other than to notice after a while that we were not moving anywhere at all. So now it was lesson time - how do we free the boat from the mud. First thing we did was to try and reverse out with just the engine. This did not get us anywhere as the engine (electric) is not that strong. Next thing we did was to put all of our bodies on the port side and start to heel the boat in that direction with our combined body weight (where was Jack when we needed him?) and applying reverse to the engine. After a bit the boat started to move and slowly but surely we were out of the mud. A great learning experience indeed.
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| A Well Deserved Lunch Break |
On Thursday, Day 4, we were exposed to weather monitoring and application of storm watching. As we left ABYC, we noticed the buildup of clouds over the City and it was pointed out that we should keep an eye on this and not go too far out so that a quick return would be possible if required. After about 20 minutes the sky started to darken, I took a quick look at the radar web site and saw a t-storm cell coming our way. So a quick turnaround, dropping of the sails and return to the slip brought us back in time to hear a few thunder claps as we entered the boat basin and we enjoyed a bit of a downpour after having de-rigged and snugged up the boat. Another great real life lesson.
We spent the rest of the afternoon goofing off - washing down the boat and a quick swim in the inner Ashbridge's Bay - a good time was had by all, especially cleaning of the bat in the rain. I couldn't get anyone to stop!
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| Boat Cleaning In The Rain |
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| The Cheeriest Boat Cleaning I Have Ever Seen |
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| He Just Wouldn't Stop! |
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| Goofing Off Time on the Dock |
On Friday, Day 5 we did a bit of a sail first thing with a nice wind before pulling back into the Bay for an anchoring session after which everyone except Madi went into the drink for a brief swim. Before leaving the dock as we were rigging the boat we got a scuba diving lesson from Jessie as she was very keen to show us how her phone could survive a dunking into the water at our boat slip. She was very brave to go in and also very polite to ask if it was okay to do so. The phone seems to have survived.
The afternoon was spent doing workbooks, writing the Basic Cruising and PCOC exams - everyone did very well.
It is safe to say that everyone (including me) had a lot of fun and learned a lot about sailing.
Congrats to all of these new sailors!
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