Time to Get Serious

We're back from our Waupoos cruise. As expected, this was a training cruise for me. I was more involved in more aspects of running the boat than I have been in the past. If I wasn't at the wheel or fooling around with the new GPS, I was "studying" - reading my book, Cruising for Cowards. In spite of it's title, this has proved to be one of the better cruising primers that I've read - full of information about living happily and safely on a sailboat - so much so that I passed it over to Bob to read chapters on electronics and boat maintenance. Incidentally, the authors allow that if you were truly a coward - you wouldn't be taking off to do long distance cruising on a sailboat.

As part of my trip preparation, I routinely backed the boat out when we left docks and also docked the boat a few times. I've a lot of work to do on the docking part and although I've calmed down a lot during the whole process, when I feel that the boat has "gotten away from me" and I'm not understanding why she is moving in a certain way, I still tend to panic. A boat turns differently than a car, has no brakes and is affected by winds and currents. When backing up, one also has to account for the tendency of the boat to kick to one side ("prop walk") and when going forward, in addition to the wind, and turning issues, there is the problem of peering past the nose of the boat that seems awfully far away and trying to judge where you are in relation to the approaching dock. I try to remember that Bob had his years of learning before he became as skilled as he is now at the wheel. During the first few years when we had Chance Encounter, we often came in too close or too far away from the dock, or found ourselves seemingly "stuck" in the middle of a channel between rows of boats trying to maneuver in or out. It would be easiest to just go back to assisting and to stay away from the helm - but it's safest if I learn to handle the boat confidently in various situations - so, in spite of my fears, I'll keep at it.

Using the new GPS is a different story altogether. Now here is something that I took to easily. I was fairly quickly able to figure out how to place way points, build routes and modify the various screens available. Bob got so sick of the beep, beep that announced each push of a button, that I had to turn it off. He also began to worry when I approached the navigation pod for fear that I was going to mess up the appearance of the screen that he had just carefully set up. His fears were groundless .... of course ;-)

While away, we kept thinking of things that we had to do - what needs to come to the boat, be taken off of the boat, still be bought for the trip, what needs to be installed, fixed, or added. I made a long list of "to dos" and now that we are home, we'll begin to check them off. There's lots still left to do - and we have just under a month. These will be busy days but we feel as if things are falling into place, and that we will be ready (or mostly ready) on departure day.