First time Sailing

What do we know about sailing? Can we “just” step on board en sail away? In the past, long time ago, we both did sail. Do we still know everything? When our youngest daughter sails in her small Optimist, we give her good advice(at least we think we do). Isn’t it wise to rent an open sailing boat together and have a look how we’re doing?

All those thoughts are around in our heads. I can’t imagine that sailing on the small lakes of Friesland in an open sailboat has something to do with sailing at Sea. In Friesland, it’s very crowdy, the lakes are small, I think you can’t set sail longer than 10 minutes on one course. When the lake is bigger, then other boats forces you to change course. At sea you will set course for x nautical Miles. Of course you need to look around you every couple of minutes, have a look on the weather and you need to take action when external factors forces you. But still, an open sailboat in Friesland is something else, we think.

Nevertheless we think it’s not a bad idea to rent a sailboat. The goal is getting that feeling again, playing with the wind. We decided to bring Casper in a marina in Heeg end renting a Valk(a 6.5 meter open sailboat).

And 5 September it is. In the early Saturday morning we’re docking Casper in Heeg. We discussed with our daughters and the youngest wanted to join us. The oldest daughter wanted to stay on Casper with the dog. What can a teenager better do then relaxing hours and hours.

We’re calling the rental company and after a short period of time, we walked to the small rental port. Wearing sailing jackets, unfortunately no sailing trousers. Wearing jeans isn’t the best idea but hey, we don’t have anything else yet. During the walk, we noticed there was serious wind, 18knt. The owner of the boat warns us not to take risks….she didn’t know us. Risks and Roelof/Carla are not that common 😉. When we are in the Valk we got some explanation about the sails. Wow, that was a very long time ago.

When all the explanation was finished, we sail on the engine out of the port. 10 minutes later we reach the Heegermeer. We diced to moor the boat on a mooring ball, so we can prepare the sails. Let’s reef the main sail. Two reefs in the sail to be sure. The furling head sail is ready to unroll, but first we’re starting with just the main sail. We have some kind of excitement, or maybe we are more nerveous then we like to admit.

We untie the line to the mooring ball, steering a little bit of the wind and there we go. What a great feeling! We decide to make some movements in the lee of the island first. Tacking, well upwind, downwind, we try everything. I suddenly notice that you have very little visibility in such an open sailing boat. Next time when a small sailboat does not see Casper, I promise I’ll be less annoyed.

We decide to raise the headsail. Carla and Froukje are managing the headsail. How good! Now it’s time to sail past the island. Tacking into the wind. We are reaching big rocks close by portside and at the right time, we’re tacking. We noticed that sometime tacking is going very well, and other times not so well. We’re doing something wrong, but what?

After we are back behind the island again with half wind, we do this all again. Sometimes tacking works, sometimes not. The times it’s going ok, the headsail get stuck a little bit…. Again we’re reaching the rocks very close, wanted to tack…. Does not work this time. Rocks coming closer… Fortunately I have enough experience to decide that we need to start the engine, tacking with the help of the engine and turn the engine off again. There we go. No I do not suffer from an ego that says: ”it should be without the engine”. If it’s not working one way around, it should work the other way. Safety first, always.

And of course, I can’t help myself, I wanted to heel over the boat. De wind is increasing to more then 22knts. O I’m so happy that we are conservative sailors and set from start 2 reefs. Nevertheless, the water splashes around our ears and we notice that sailing trousers are really necessary. Because of the load of water, the hard wind and because of that the low temperature, we decide after a couple of hours that we should stop for the day. In a lee spot, I put the boat into the wind, drop the sails and motoring to a mooring ball. We cleaned up everything. Just neatly store everything and we can go to the port.

O what a great experience after so many years. Playing with nature, feel the power of the wind. The only thing we didn’t like was our tacking. We have now concluded that we were doing 2 things “wrong”: When we were tacking I automatically pulled the mainsheet.(why???) And besides that, when we loosen the headsail we waited till the boat was fully tacked before we pull the heat sail again. Meanwhile we know we need to use the heat sail to go through the wind by gently pull the sail halfway.

After we docked the boat into the rental port and walked to Casper. A warm cup of tea was very nice at that moment. We enjoyed every moment of this afternoon and new for sure, we are going to do this much more. Does this something to do with sailing on Sea? Still, I don’t think so. Of course the basics will help, but I think to be better prepared to sail over Sea, you we need to take a course about Sea sailing.

Nevertheless, we have enjoyed this small step in our process again.