sailing love

These days more and more people find sailing a great form of recreation where they can get the chance to toss off the daily grind and just sail away. If you think you have heard those words before of course you are correct. Sailing by Rod Stewart and Sail away by David Gray are both hits tunes in their own time. It's 9:00pm, March 19th 2008 and in 5 hours I will meet my best mate and together we will catch a favorable tide and wind, let our boat slip away form the marina and we too will be sailing. "Sail away with me honey, what will be will be...." Such cruizy words. But tonight may prove to be far from a cruizy night start. I just checked the weather and it's blowing 30 knots down on the bay and we have some rain. Oh well the next two days promise to be glorious. "What will be will be..." I love the song and love the sport. Even more I would love to tell others to join us out there on the ocean and learn what we have. Learn to sail. Learn to love the ocean and all she has to offer. I promise it will change your life.

O.K. so let's get down to it. For beginners, you will need to know there are no floors on boats, we have decks. No left nor right but port and starboard. When sailing into the wind we point and when we sail away we run. Sometimes we need to close haul and we do our best never to broach. We can start with the most commonly mentioned parts of a sailing vessel, starboard which happens to be the right side of the boat, while the left side is known as the port. The bow is the forard part of the hull, the back part of the hull is the stern. If you're looking at the front part of the vessel, that's your forard or forward, and beam is the widest part. Masts are your vertical spars, while horizontal spars are gaffs, booms, or poles, depending on whether the poles are high or if it can or cannot hit a sailor. Ceilings or bulkheads are the walls of the sailboat, but the surfaces we term ceilings on land have the term of overheads. The decks are your floors, toilets are named heads, and galley is a favorite because it happens to be the kitchen.

The most common sail boat these days has two triangular sails. One forward and one aft. These are called the main sail (aft) and the jib (forward) and normally this boat would set up as a Bermudan sloop. Indeed this is what we will leave the shores on tonight. One can also find other kinds of sloops such as lateen and gaff-rigged sloops. The first one, lateen sloops, come with triangular sails with its upper edge connected to the gaff while the lower edge is connected to the boom. The gaff and boom are hinged together. On the other hand, gaff-rigged sloops may have a topsail over the gaff. Now should you see sail boats with two masts, they may be yawls, ketches, or even schooner. Schooners can come with masts with the second after the front mast known as the main mast. It also happens to be the tallest mast for schooners. While the front mast is the tallest for both ketch and yawl, the shorter mast happens to be the one on the rear known as mizzen mast. What differentiates the ketch from yawl is that the mizzen mast is situated ahead of rudderpost while it is behind rudderpost for yawls. Oh I am sorry. Got carried away there, enough of that if you wish to bone up any further I have included a link.

Sailing is a fun activity that can be exciting, enjoyable and challenging to individuals who are particularly fond of the sea and the waters. For those of you who are not already fond of the ocean give it a try. Riding on the wind can give you a tremendous feeling of freedom. . But like all any sport, rules and regulations come with sailing any vessel not just for sports but for sailing in general to protect the sailors and their vessels from injuries and accidents. In this regard, we have International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea from the International Maritime Organization. There's also something on International Association of Lighthouse Authorities standards for safe navigation. Safety of Life at Sea regulations for owners and boat operators are in place. And racers continue to adhere to Racing Rules of Sailing by the International Sailing Federation. But most of all sailing is a sport of common sense. For those very rare times when thing don't go as planned and you need a lifesaver I wrote a couple of articles earlier and have supplied links to those off to the right. Of particular interest to all new sailors and especially to those jumping on a new boat as crew for the first time is an article on M.O.B. (Man over board) Just like the boys scouts say. "Be prepared"

When we sailing on the T.V. we are used to seeing sleek boats screaming up and down around a set course marked by brightly colored. Buoys. This is course sail racing and is a sport enjoyed by many ages and many classes. Boats are usually separated by divisions and given ratings so as to even the field. Those big boats you see cost heaps to buy and even more to own. But if you think a roller coaster is an exciting ride wait till you see, no feel, all that sail go up and fill with wind on a 40 foot racing sloop running across a 25 knot wind. Yahooooooo! It becomes even more fun when you begin to understand just how close to the boats physical limits those skippers are pushing. You have seen those big wave days on movies in Hawaii right, snapped boards and surfers sporting cuts. Multiply that by hundreds of thousand of dollars when a big blow hits a racing fleet full of hard nuts. But to those who take it on they love it.

This is where my mate and I come in. Our boat is what you call a sports cruiser. It is not a full blown cruiser which are solid as a rock and at times tend to perform as such but it is not a finicky highly strung racer either. It just gets from A to B in a very quick time. This is where my heart lies. Going down to the marina to set the boat up, taking care of her, training in close waters and when I get some time off I go. I just love setting those sails and heading off for a hundred mile jaunt. Now remember in a boat such as our 30 footer a top speed of 8 knots is very good. We do have an engine but we don't like to use it. So it can take us 11 or 12 hours to travel 70 miles. This is fine by us. We just enjoy the breeze, the smell of the ocean, the occasional visit by some form of sea life (usually friendly) and a friendly chat between friends. It just doesn't get much better for me. This sport is great for unwinding and waking that city heart up with the challenge of the ocean.

I guess I should close with a story about my about sail boat heroes. Recently I have been watching You Tube videos of a group of guys racing 21 foot (6.5 meter) sail boats 4,000 miles no stop from France to Brazil. The race is called the Transat 6.5 and requires that these sailors sail single handed, that's right by themselves, for 4,000 miles in 30 days. The sailors eat, sleep and do everything else in this little boat without rest. The longest sleep they can have is about 20 minutes due to the hazards of being hit by a tanker or such. Oh and if you think this is just a pleasant long distance cruise take a look at the speeds these things are ding in the You Tubes I have attached for you. This is simply amazing and my hat is off to theses guys. I even found a nice boat to buy seconf hand here. Who knows if you suddenly see my hubs stop one day maybe you will find me at the start line of the transat. Stranger things have happened.