Getting started

[Slrman]

I'd bought my first sailboat about a month earlier.  Pogo wasn't a very good boat.  She was a 12-foot home-built sloop made of plywood with a canvas skin glued on.  It had a folding centerboard that pivoted up to either side on a hinge.  This odd arrangement was controlled by a line on each side of the hull.  In theory, this allowed the board to be adjusted to point straight down when heeled.  This assumed that you stayed on one tack long enough to be worth the trouble of figuring out how much adjustment to make.  It's interesting that the maxis now all do this.  Hope it works better for than it did for me.

Being a totally amateur design, Pogo was not quick.  In fact, she was heavy, draggy, and slow.  These qualities made her a good beginner's boat with very forgiving habits; something that likely saved my life, both the sailing and physical ones.

After a couple of sails on small lakes close to home, I decided to try my skills on Lake Cowan in Ohio.  This was a large lake with permanent docks, slips, and home to a regular fleet of sailors with a club and organized events.
We left home early on a Saturday morning to make the ninety-minute tow to the launch ramps.  It took only a few minutes for us to rig Pogo and we were soon launched and sailing.

As we plodded across the lake I noticed a large mass of sailboats off to our left.  "Hmmm," I thought, "they don't seem to be doing much, just sort of milling around.  Wonder why they aren't doing some serious sailing?"

"Hoooonnnnkkk!!"  We both jumped when a very loud horn sounded.  As I was starting to wonder "What the...?" every boat we could see turned and started sailing straight at us.

We were instantly surrounded by plunging Thistles, Flying Dutchmen, C-Scows, and boats of all sizes and descriptions.  They were all going like the very hammers of Hades and every skipper was screaming, mostly at us.

"Staaarrbooaard!"  "Move it!"  "Get the @%$# out of the way!" and some things even less polite.  Really, there's no way those strangers could have known those things about my family and none of those objects would have fit anyway.

By now, you've probably deduced we were sailing parallel to the starting line of a race with the bad luck to do it exactly at start time.  After only a few seconds of this, I determined that discretion and good sense dictated that we should at least be moving in the same direction as the fleet.  That way, any collisions wouldn't be T-bones, with the bow of an irate racer planted in Pogo's midships. 
Even headed with the flow, we had boats, skippers, and crews on all sides of us.  We huddled low in the hull, trying to ignore the flapping Dacron, snapping lines, and imprecations of balked sailors.

When most of the noise was past us, I sighed in relief. Only to be snapped back to attention by a loud hailer from the committee boat.  "Share the lake, skipper, please don't block the start."  I waved, in acknowledgment or apology; neither of us knew.  At least he was polite.

[Zen]

Sirman,

I KNOW JUST how you Feel (felt)

Been there, did that ... ;D

[CapnK]

Some lessons come harder than others, but then are often remembered better because of it. :D