Today I had the cool opportunity for have my first sail lesson ever. For some reason I never had too much with sailing until I moved to this tropical island. Here is boat galore of course, and when you live in an area with a lot of water, you start to use it for that reason. My core business on the water was mostly kite surfing, but honestly I have done this in months.
Kit surfing takes a lot of times actually. The wind has to be good, and you need a decent amount of time to actually get your stuff ready and go out on the water. Also I am for sure not a good enough kite surfer to go by myself all alone, so I always need a buddy. Excuses excuses, I know. Fact is: I didnt go enough as I wanted to. Also the local kite school took a big blow from the hurricane so they were closed a good while but open again now. But now there has been hardly any wind for weeks. Time to try something different.
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This is not me as you understand ;)
The local yacht club were offering lessons for $35 for 3 hours. I find this reasonable. You take their material, an instructor is close by you in a dinghy (a small motorboat) and you get a lot of tips and tricks. So I went for my first sailing lesson in a kiddy boat called a Pico.
This 10 foot boat is perfect to handle by yourself, even with zero experience. Let me start with telling you I am not a natural at all, but I managed to NOT capseize today which I was really happy for. The wind was slow, about 12 knots. But getting the tips and tricks how to tack your sail (turn it to the other side) when the wind is slow is perfect to start with. I was able to sail to different points, go upwind, go downwind, create some speed, and slow down when I want to.
Learning stuff is nice, and being on the water as well. Since I was sailing in the lagoon which is really close to the airstrip I got a little bit worried when I was 100 meters or so away from a blasting jet in take off. I was afraid for a second my sail would catch fire or blow over or something like that hahahaha. Luckily this didnt happen of course, there is also a road next to the airstrip where cars can drive and dont catch on fire. You get what I mean!'
I didnt have a chance to take any snaps of the boat or while sailing as you understand. Boats and phones are not really a winning combination :) More sailing next week! I like it!