Lake Sailing

My parents and I have been busy trying to get the house emptied out and I've got to give all of you a PSA to de-clutter your life! We have so much stuff and the majority of it is so useless. Consumerism is out of control! I've always kind of felt this way about consumerism, but moving onto the boat and only being able to take what I absolutely need, make me feel so much more liberated and free. (Disclaimer: I'm storing some stuff at my brother Joe and his fiancé Audrey's house. But the more I think about it, the more I wish I would have just gotten rid of all of it. I'll have a decision to make in June when they expect me to move it out.) Anyways, instead of submitting my thesis about how consumerism is destroying the fabric of America, I'll just tell you about sailing.

A couple weeks ago my mom's cousin Linda and her husband Boyd came and stayed with us for two nights. The first day they got here we sailed to Andrew's Bay in south Lake Washington. It was my first time spending the night on the boat away from the dock and I loved it! Once we were anchored we had a great tuna dinner and spent the Monday night with 8 other boats inside the bay. The ladder of our boat is typically not on the swim step because it would be in the way, so my dad built it so that we could store it elsewhere, then put it on the swim step when we needed it. Well, when we were all done swimming at night my dad went to grab the ladder but I told him to leave it in case we swim more the next day. In the morning we discovered that our ladder had fallen off the swim step and floated into the lily pads. I felt responsible, and took the long morning swim to retrieve the ladder. I suppose the captain knows best sometimes.
We had minimal wind the rest of that morning, and as soon as the wind started to pick up again I had my friend pick me up off the boat into his boat. The actual sailing from that overnight trip was uneventful - just lots of learning how the boat handles.

Epic at anchorage in Andrew's Bay

About a week ago my parents and I took my grandma (mom's mom) out for a 3 hour sail. The wind was really blowing (I'll start documenting better...). We took off and had to shout to communicate over the loud winds. On our first tack, one of the jib (sail up front. It's actually a genoa, but I'll spare you the details) sheets (ropes) broke and a little bit of craziness followed due to the jib that was violently being whipped by the wind. Then to add to the chaos, I took the helm (wheel) from my dad and he had it turned all the way one direction, but I couldn't tell which direction because our straight ahead mark on the wheel was turned down all the way to 6 o'clock which is the furthest you want to turn the wheel, or else you risk breaking the rudders and losing your steering altogether. So to solve that, all while the jib was flapping, I pulled up one of the rudders to check it and get the steering aligned again. It was a chaotic five minutes, but everyone on board communicated well and we got everything fixed and enjoyed the remainder of the sail. We even got to play around with reefing the main sail, that is, to take it down from the top a bit so that you don't risk flipping the boat in high winds. We didn't necessarily need to do it in the conditions we were in, but it was good practice.

In our latest voyage, my parents and I took my aunt and uncle Sue and Jeff out for a one night stay in Andrew's Bay. We began the trip with Joe, Audrey, and Audrey's sister Diana on board, but after about an hour we swung back by our house and the three of them abandoned ship and swam to shore. After that we made great time to Andrew's Bay and enjoyed a Friday night with about 60-75 other boaters. Our favorite anchorage spot in that bay is all the way in the back of it, so I got to navigate the bay of boats by sailing downwind with mainsail up. I split between two anchored boats with about 10 feet on each side. On my left, the boater was impressed and clapping, on my right the boater was giving me a salty ol' stink eye. In the morning the wind was minimal and we motored all the way back home.

That's been it for our sailing the last two weeks or so. Now we're really focusing on getting all of our stuff and cars sold from our house so we can depart by September 1st at the latest. I'm starting to get restless - I'm ready to get going!