Humility Lessons

So we added a few more boats to the family fleet.

It started so innocuously – my son outgrew his Opti. The decision was that he would start sailing Lasers next year and an opportunity to pick up a very lightly used boat from the Laser Worlds presented itself.

Well, I took a look at that boat and thought “gee, I’ve lost enough weight so I bet I could sail it too.” Of course that wouldn’t be as much fun as sailing a Laser with him. So after some discussion my wife relented and agreed that I too could pick up a Laser (albeit a much older and more used one) so I could learn to sail it and also do some Frostbite sailing this winter.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of “Frostbiting”, well it may be as dumb an idea as it sounds. Basically you get a small boat and race it. In the winter, when it is cold, snowing, icy, etc. This is New England, not the Bahamas…it gets cold here in the winter and we are sailing in December and January. So you get a dry suit (shown above), wear a lot of long underwear and layers and try not to fall off the boat too often.

Now, unlike my son who has been sailing small boats since he was eight or so and is now a perfectly competent dinghy skipper I never sailed as a kid. I used to race, but competitive sailing is not something I took up until well into my thirties. And I’ve never raced Dinghies.

A Laser is a small boat, about 14′ long and weighing around 125 pounds. I used to say that I didn’t “sail any boat that weighs less than me”, however I’ve changed my tune since losing enough weight to get onto one of these little things. This is a boat designed for “an athletic 175 pound man” which I was at one point in my life. I’m close enough now that I can get on it and sail it without falling off all that often.

It is a very different experience than sailing a keel boat. Keel boats like like the old Weeble toys – they wobble, but they don’t fall down. So we can bury the rail in the water on the big boat and nothing happens – you just can’t flip the thing, it always comes back up. On the Laser, well it flips over if you do that too much. It flips over if you do any number of things wrong. I am fairly certain I will discover every one of them this fall.

In some ways it is like learning to sail all over again. This little boat is so much more sensitive and responsive than anything I’ve ever sailed that it takes relearning some of my worst habits. So far I’ve only dumped myself in the water once – and it wasn’t that bad. I got the boat right back up and got right back in it and kept going. Not even an ego bruise really; I expected to capsize more often than I have been so far and I expected to have a lot more trouble getting back in the boat. Last time I sailed a boat this size I turtled it (turned it completely upside down) a mile off shore in the water in front of my house and couldn’t get back on. It must of looked like the poor boat was being assaulted by some stricken pinniped as I kept trying to lunge back on board like an exhausted seal trying to beach itself on the rocks to no avail. With the Laser, well it came right back upright and I climbed right in it and sailed off.

This coming Saturday is the first day of racing, the day the reality check happens. I can tack the boat, I can jibe the boat and I can sail around a mark without hitting it. Of course I tend to get my feet tangled in the sheet and hit myself in the head a lot and my tacks and jibes are not what anyone would describe as “graceful” or “fast”. What remains to be seen is how well I can put my minimal boat handling skills together with all that I’ve forgotten about racing over the last few years and not completely humiliate myself this week.