Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

By the end of our first day under his instruction, I had almost stopped calling Captain David, ‘Steve’. And that’s a pretty good summation of how mentally taxing learning to sail is.

An inability to remember names aside, after 4 days of instruction, I have passed the practical and written portions of the American Sailing Association ‘101 Basic Keelboat Sailing’ certification. A certification, which means I shouldn’t ding anyone’s boat on the way in or out of port (although it’s still the time of by far the greatest buttock clenching) and can manoeuvre a keelboat of up to approximately 27 feet in light-moderate winds.

The structure of the course I found really effective. Over the 4 days, perhaps 30 minutes was spent in a classroom, with all the remaining time spent at or on the boat. A daily video lecture of 40-60 minutes to watch as preparation took the place of extensive classroom time and also provided a reference guide to how to perform all of the boat setup and manoeuvres covered in the course. Some parts, such as rigging the sails, I needed to watch multiple times over the week to refresh my memory of what came before. Naively, I hadn’t expected to have to know so many knots either. Having left watching the first video until the night before the course, I had to hurriedly spend the evening learning knots with a length of shock cord, which I fortunately had in my hiking spares/repair kit. Learning to tie a cleat hitch one-handed took a few days longer but proved an invaluable skill when raising the main sail to avoid having to climb down into the cockpit to secure the line.

The other aspect of the course which I appreciated was the 2:1 learner to instructor ratio. This really accelerated the learning process by ensuring that there was never any sitting around waiting for something to do. Not that by the end of the 4 hour sessions I wouldn’t have gladly taken a short mental reset break. On days 1 and 2, I sailed with Ryan, a 30-something user interface designer with aspirations to boat ownership, under the instruction of the jovial captain Steve. My fellow learner on days 3 and 4 was Jennifer, a marketer and amateur pilot, with captain David as instructor. Despite a self-confessed tendency towards snarkiness, to his credit he did intersperse enough praise to stave off mutiny and being forced to walk the plank. He was also a very good instructor, so we both learned and refined a lot of skills. Also, I have never met anyone who actually chewed tobacco, so that was educational too.

As yet, I don’t yet have any definite plans of what to do with this newfound knowledge. Sailing, despite the mental exertions, is an activity that I found really rewarding, but continuing my learning in German is an intimidating prospect. I haven’t looked yet how closely the vocabulary aligns, so fingers crossed that it isn’t too different.

My next stop is Santa Cruz to relax on the beach for a few days. Then it is back to San Francisco for a few days of touristing (I was too wiped out after sailing to do much this week), and then home.

Unfortunately, owing to stowing my phone out of the way of splashes and intensive nature of the training, I really didn’t take many photos at all.