Friday 11-17-2006

On Friday, the 17th I met up with my buddy Nick and we went sailing. I had not been out on the Tempest (the 22' sailboat I used to race on) since before diagnosis. It was really fun to get out on the water. Nick and I had a great time and I managed pretty well. I do not have the strength or agility that I used to but I could pull in the sheet adequately and get around OK. The weather was not exactly ideal as the wind was a little flukey it was a little overcast and foggy on the water. Once Nick and I sailed out of the jetty of Alimitos Bay the visibility actually went down pretty quickly and within about a minute we had lost sight of the ends of the jetty. How many handheld gps receivers do we own between the two of us, and how many were on the boat? 2 and 0, respectively. Yes this was the one day that both of us forgot our gps's. We really wanted to do a little sailing and figured if worse came to worse we would just sail north until we hit long beach and then make our way east to the jetty and Alimitos Bay. You always hear about 18-24 year old men making bad decisions but we felt that our judgement would be sound because we are out of that age range. All in all the sail went really well. It was a little trippy not being able to see anything but white all around you for almost the entire time sailing. The wind was fairly light though we got a couple of puffs here and there.



At one point we thought we heard a faint rumbling noise and figured that it was the waves on the outside of the breakwater (though we could not see the breakwater). The noise got louder and louder until all of a sudden, an oil tanker came into view maybe 200 yards off our port side. This was pretty freaky as those ships can destroy a small boat and not even feel it. We started really getting anxious when we could not tell if it was coming towards us or going away from us. We cleared its path and then tacked around to try to see which way it was going. It ended up that it was facing away from us and I think it was at anchor but Nick thinks it was moving slowly away from us. That certainly added some excitement to the sail.

We decided to make our way back and as we had pretty much stayed on one heading on the way out, we just followed the reverse heading on the way back. There was just enough wind to put up the spinnaker- what a beautiful sail. It may not have the same impact on everyone but for me flying the chute and feeling the boat surge forward (not that it really surged in a 5 knot breeze) is quite an experience. We did start to get a bit worried after a little while as we still could not see any land or anything that would let us know where we were. We saw one yellow buoy but there are about five yellow buoys that all look the same in that area of the Long Beach harbor. Nick was sure we were going to hit the beach on the Long Beach side of the jetty and I was sure we were going to hit Seal Beach. We just kept on the heading and, wouldn't you know, we ended up sailing right to the Alimitos Bay harbor entrance. Our actual position was basically the average of where each of us thought we were.

No day on the water is complete without something going wrong with the boat as we had a little trouble getting the spinnaker down on the way in. The spinnaker is an amazing sail when going downwind. When trying to sail upwind to the dock it becomes quite annoying as it is basically a big parachute that prevents you from making any progress to windward. Sadly, we had to resort to using the paddle to make it back to the dock (how embarrassing). The spinnaker halyard ended up being stuck and we had to stand on the dock and tip the boat over to untie and take down the sail. Things just are never as easy as you would like them to be.

All in all, great day on the water with Nick. Hopefully, I will get back to my usual self and we will take part in a few regattas next year.
-TN