Sailing

I have been sailing on a pretty regular basis since February 2001. I started out crewing for races and was fortunate enough to land a regular ride right at the start, on a Catalina 22. I had certain desirable characteristics (work and personal life which did not interfere with my availability on weekends, willingness to sail in any kind of weather) which I guess compensated for cluelessness and lack of physical strength. That boat got pulled out for a bottom job which took longer than initially expected, so I started crewing on other boats, at first in the Catalina 22 fleet and then others.

I got into racing because 1) if you haven't got a boat, it's vastly easier to find racing skippers who need crew than friends with boats who want company and 2) it's cool. Racing on a boat with good crew work, where everybody knows what they're supposed to be doing and does it without the skipper needing to micromanage everything, is a really great feeling. And the more usual quest for new and better ways to screw up spinnaker hoists and find all the holes on the course is a lot of fun, too.

Late in 2002, rather sooner than I really intended, I bought my own boat, Fearless. I was somewhat hesitant to get into boat maintenance, and didn't know for sure whether I'd really sail more with a boat of my own (I was sailing about 25 weekends a year), but I also wanted to be able to take my friends and family out and to be able to go sailing when there wasn't a race scheduled. I did take the precaution of getting a well-built boat in good condition without a lot of moving parts, and one which after a few moderately hairy experiences I could sail (and launch and retrieve) on my own without much difficulty. (I keep her with the mast up, so I don't have to mess with stepping and unstepping it every time, but I can do both by myself.) I have had numerous friends and relatives out on her, including my mother (aged 82 at the time--I've only talked her into it once so far), and so far I have been sailing her about 60 times a year, so I am sailing more than before.

I do race Fearless, both in club races and on the Texas Centerboard Circuit. I can't say that our racing career to date has been successful beyond my wildest dreams, but we've done a lot of races and only flipped the boat twice and haven't caused serious damage to ourselves or anything we've hit.

I still enjoy sailing on Other People's Boats as well. I have a personal goal of sailing on twenty boats per year (including mine, and they don't all have to be different types of boats or different boats every year). Most of my sailing is still on Lake Travis, but I have sailed on OPB in seven states now, and have trailered Fearless to Canyon Lake, Lake Texoma, Stillhouse Hollow Lake, and Lake Ray Hubbard.

I also sail Fearless as much as I can--races, practices, taking friends and family out, and just getting in some quality A Girl and Her Boat time. During the summer, I like to sail on weekday evenings, when there's more likely to be wind and the powerboats (and their wakes) are fewer.

What I can't do with Fearless is race one-design, unless I want to trailer her to Florida for Harpoon Nationals in Ocala in April. With that in mind, this spring I bought a second boat, a Sunfish. I was intending to name her Delicate Flower in honor of my late friend Mark, with whom I raced for the first three years of Harpoon Nationals, the only person ever to refer to me as a delicate flower of Southern womanhood in any context whatsoever. The boat just wouldn't go for that, though, so she is Fishy. So far I have raced her for one Wednesday night, finishing solidly in the back of the pack. I plan to take her out again as soon as the lake reopens.