After two years in Houston, I decided to try and rent out a sailboat and get out on the water. With my RYA Level 3 certification for dinghy sailing, it turns out that there are no places in Houston that rent out dinghys like the Laser. But I did find a school (Bay Area Sailing School) which gives keelboat certification, where the upper levels allow you to charter a keelboat anywhere in the world. The certification is the ASA, or the American Sailing Assoiation.
This school offers basic certification classes every weekend on a 2-day class, so I figured I would try and show up unannounced and see if they had an open space for me. They did! So by 8:30 AM I was sitting in the classroom ready to get started.
I expected a lot to be re-hashing of concepts I already know, which was true. But I was immediately struck by the amount of classroom time– this must be an American thing, because in one day I almost spent more classroom hours than in 2 separate 2-day RYA certifications. (or maybe I’m just shutting the RYA classroom hours out of my mind?) But it was good, as there were many things I learned about local rules. Example? Dumping rules. Apparently the faster your boat is travelling, the larger waste you are allowed to dump overboard. Weird !
Anyway the afternoon was spent in the keelboat. It was a Catalina 22 Capri (vessel named “Breathe Easy”) which has an outboard motor, a tiller-rudder attached to the transom, and a non-furling jib. One thing which was good, was that the instructor did not rush the rigging up part. This made it clear that learning to tie up the bowline (for the jibsheets) and clove hitch (for the fenders) were critical to being able to rig up and sail. None of us on the boat (4 without the instructor) were good at the knots, so we all had some homework to do.
The instructor took us out of the harbor and into the bay using the motor, then once the sails were hoisted up, he put me at the helm first (handed me the tiller). The mechanics of sailing the keelboat is not very different, except that you must rely on the crew to trim the sails. On a dinghy I’m accustomed to getting a feel for the wind by shifting my weight, adjusting the main sheet, and playing with the tiller. On the keelboat though, this a bit slower going since it’s your crew who are controlling the main and jib. So it is much more of a ‘set course, trim sails, and keep steady’ type of sailing, as opposed to the more active constant adjusting and shifting you do in a dinghy.
The first day’s goal seemed to be to get everybody comfortable with sailing a straight course toward a target, and to practice a few tacks. The instructor didn’t focus on sail trim yet, so it felt weird sailing on a close reach with the sails a bit too far out…but the trimming instruction would come later.
Not much to learn, The main thing was working with a jib using a winch, which was new to me. After everybody had their turn at the helm we headed back and that was the end of the day.
The biggest learning for me on the day, was the mechanics and logistics of entering/exiting the harbor, docking and undocking, and rigging up and rigging down the keelboat. At the end of this first day I am looking forward to more drilling in day 2 – man-overboard drills are required to pass the course so that should get me much more comfortable with sailing this bigger boat.