Victory!

Our first sailing lesson was a success! No one fell overboard, I still don’t get seasick, and the only time we had real trouble handling the boat was docking.

This was the first of a number of courses we’ll be taking to get up to speed with sailing. It was the dead-simple basics: names of the different parts of the boat, how to put up and take down the sail, how to steer in various wind conditions. Of course, the wind conditions this weekend were mostly “not much,” so we spent a lot of time sailing north against the current in the Hudson, trying not to get dragged into any of the big barges or fall too far downstream to make it back to harbor. (The boat had a very tiny outboard. Very. Tiny. Even on full throttle, it barely out-gunned the current pulling us south!) The wind, though light, was from two different directions on the two different days, which was really good. Even though we mostly sailed north, it meant we got to practice sailing at different points of the wind – “beam reaching,” which means sailing across the wind, and “sailing close hauled,” which means sailing basically upwind (and up-river).

I was surprised by how much of what we did was fairly familiar to me. I did a week-long community sailing program when I was seventeen, and the Swallows and Amazons series was one of my favorites growing up, but that doesn’t really add up to much! Still, I knew which side was port (left!) and which was starboard (right!), and I remembered how to tie off a cleat (which I couldn’t describe, but has clearly survived in my muscle memory). Compared to the other people in the class, Chris and I were practically experts. Of the three of them, only one had ever been on a sailboat before – and that was just once!

On the other hand, Chris definitely knows more than me, which is reassuring. He’s spent a lot more time on boats than I have, and it’s good to feel that if I can’t cope with something, he can always step in to help. It eases some of my fears that we’re going to sink our boat the first day out! At the same time, it definitely taps my competitive side. (Yes, I’m the competitive one in this relationship.) I don’t mind depending on him for some things, but when it comes to the skills we’ll be relying on for our health and safety, I want to be at least as good as he is – and hopefully, in some areas, better.

We did find out that I’m better at docking the boat than he is; I’ve never done it before, but I nailed it both times I tried. Chris?  Not so much.  Usually he’s better at anything that involves spatial perception – I have a notoriously bad sense of direction – but I taught him to parallel park, and docking seems to tap the same skills. It’s all about slowing the boat and turning it, so that just as you come to a stop you’re also parallel to the dock. More realistically, someone has to leap off the moving boat onto the dock and haul as hard as they can to help you slow down in time.

Chris was steering the first two times we tried to dock at the end of the day, and we didn’t even get to the leaping-and-hauling stage; we were just too far from the dock and going too fast. The third time wasn’t the charm either! Our instructor took the helm and headed in, but when Chris leaped onto the dock with the line, we were moving too fast for him to hold us. Eventually, we had to have me on the helm, steering, the instructor handling the engine, and Chris on shore to grab us. I’m just glad we got home eventually!

More stories – and pictures – tomorrow. I’m about to go discover the glory of the post-sailing nap. Being out all day on a boat is surprisingly tiring, even if I managed to avoid sunburn.

 

What Not To Wear

This weekend we’re starting sailing classes – which will be the first time I’ve set foot on a sailboat in more than ten years.  Unsurprisingly, I’m agonizing a little bit.  What if I get seasick?  What if I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew?  What if I fall into the Hudson and get cholera?

Mostly, though, I’m agonizing about what to wear.  Jeans?  Great in theory, but they don’t stand up well to getting wet.  Black pants?  Sure, but the ones I’ve got are professional-looking and rather nice.  I’d rather not get them dirty.  Khakis?  Okay in theory, except that I wore holes in my last pair and had to throw them out.  This leaves me with gym pants (smelly!) and skirts (no way!) as my remaining options.

Admittedly this would be less stressful if I weren’t, oh, what’s the polite word … plump?  While I’m hardly obese, I worry about how I look.  I can’t buy just any old pair of pants and expect to feel good in them.  This weekend, I want to be sailing, not self-conscious!  I’ll try to get a new pair of khakis today – I need them anyways – but if I can’t find ones I like, I have no idea what I’ll do tomorrow.

Sadly, although the Atlantic Yachting Association has been really helpful in most ways, their site doesn’t feature a “what to wear on your first day of sailing” page.  I’m hardly a fashionista, but at this point, anything would help!

 

Cruising World

Cruising World magazine has a good web archive.

They have a good guide to bareboat chartering. We are probably looking to do a bareboat trip in the winter.

Their article about cruising the Med gets into tips and tricks, including legal stuff, that makes sailing in the Med different from any where else. This sort of specific advice is really useful rather than more generic “bring potatoes and extra sails” articles.

I wish their archive of boat reviews was more useful. Boat reviewers seem to have the same attitude as video game reviewers. Everything is amazing and revolutionary. This is not helpful.

 

Online Research

I’ve been poking around the web all day, more to see what I can find than with any particular purpose. I’m just trying to get an idea of what’s out there.

The sailing world seems frozen in the Web 1.0 of ten years ago. Even pretty good blogs feature such blasts from the past as webrings. Also, you may note with despair how each new post is on a different page.

Worse, there seems to be almost no good information available for free. There is good computer software out there, but nothing like Google Earth, for instance. While getting driving directions is easy and cheap online, there does not seem to be any resource for plotting a reasonable cruising course.

Passage Weather does seem to be one of the good resources out there. I can browse around and get an idea if today is a good day to sail out of Marseilles bound for Genoa, for instance (its not).

Most excitingly, the Swagman Blog details a journey all around the med, full circle from Spain to Egypt in 9 months. This is exactly what we want to do, but perhaps at a slower pace!

 

Parents Just Don’t Understand

My inspiration for this trip is my uncle. In his forties he and his wife quit their jobs, pulled their two teenage children out of school, strapped a life vest on the dog, and set sail in the Caribbean.

Visiting them on the boat when I was twelv-ish was an amazing experience. I loved to sail then (still do!) and this was a huge boat with all sort of gadgets and full of nooks and crannies. They even had a M-16 on board which is a sure way to a young boy’s heart (though the idea scares the crap out of me now).

They have no shortage of boat stories. Like the time that Choi-Lee (the dog) fell off the boat. My uncle leaped over board after him, while shouting for the rest of the family to turn the boat around. Not the smartest idea, given that the dog had a life jacket — but my uncle didn’t!

Or the time when the published height of a bridge off by several crucial inches, and the boat got stuck under it. This became a local news story, and the family recruited about twenty people to get on the boat at low tide, pushing it down enough to sail on through.

I seem to have inherited this sailing lust from my uncle — and from my father, who grew up on the water and taught me to sail.

My mother is another story. She hates the open ocean, and is convinced that we are going to sink. Worse, at least from my point of view, she’s convince that I’m going to buy a boat tomorrow and set sail for Sumatra, where I will be killed by pirates. Her idea of my general level of organization and preparedness is a little low.

So selling the boat trip to my parents, and especially the idea that we really have crossed our “t”s and dotted our “i”s, is going to be a challenge a big as actually learning how to do this!

 

Hello, World!

Hello, world!

This is the New York Floats blog, courtesy of the lovely folks at WordPress and me, your lovely hostess, Jessica. My partner Chris and I are planning a year-long sailing trip around the Mediterranean, and we have no idea what the hell we’re doing. Of course, as we prep for our trip – mentally as well as practically – hopefully we’ll begin to figure it out! And with any luck, the questions, problems and issues we run into will help others who are thinking about a similar trip – or at least will amuse you, Gentle Reader.

So why “New York Floats?” We’ve been living in New York for the last eight years, and we (particularly Chris!) have turned New Yorkers to the core. Yes, that means we’ve got some practice living in small spaces. Still, we’re not sure how we’re going to manage a whole year without takeout, cabs and most importantly our close-knit community of friends. On the bright side, we live right near the 79th Street Boat Basin, which means we can walk from our apartment down to Atlantic Yachting for sailing lessons. We start next week … wish us luck!