Just got back from the first day of ASA 101 class.  We had really light winds all day but that didn't diminish the fun!

I got down to Coronado a little early. I wore jeans but brought shorts thinking it might be pretty warm.  Lucky I did because by the time I got down there it was already getting hot.

I went over to the docks and got checked in.  A few minutes later the instuctor, Jeff, came by and introduced himself.  I met my three other class mates then we got aboard and put our gear below.  We were on a Capri 22 again.  There was a regatta that day so they wanted us off the dock as soon as we could.  The class started at 9AM and 9AM in San Diego means no wind.  Our wind generally comes up later towards noon.

Fire up the engine and off we go.  Jeff starts with terminology.  Basically he points to something and says "What's this?" It's a long motor out of Coronado harbor.  After a while we got out in the Bay but it looks like a lake, the surface is smooth as glass.  So we continue to work on boat parts.  I'm pretty comfortable with much of the terminology having lived on a ship for four years so I was mostly quiet.  To which Jeff felt I wasn't participating...  So I participated more.  We worked on raising and lowering sails and tried hard to get some wind.  We spent some time going through our text books covering any topics we didn't feel real strong on.  The written test is first thing tomorrow morning so this session was important.  By noon we were all sun burned and eating lunch.

We could see wind across the bay so after we ate we motored to the east side of the bay and picked up some wind.  The wind slowly built for the rest of the afternoon and we were able to take turns at the helm and handling the Jib and Main sheets.  We tacked and gybed and I now know the difference. After an hour or so we headed south towards Sweetwater Channel.  There's a new marina down there and Jeff wanted to pratice docking under sail alone.  I was at the helm and less than comfortable sailing a few feet from nice yachts on one side and empty slips on the other with only the sails from propulsion.  My first try was a miss as I misjudged how the wind would affect the boat without the sails.  I assumed we'd continue to glide in the same direction once we dropped the sails.  In fact the wind pushed on the boats hull and caused us to change course.  It was a minor issue as Jeff ran forward and jumped on the dock from the bow and pushed us back off.  We raised the sails for a second run and this time it worked perfectly as I corrected for an anticipated wind caused course change.

We tied up for all of 60 seconds then we left the marina and headed back up the channel towards the bay.

This part's kinda funny:  I gave up the helm position and took up a Jib sheet position which gave me ample time to look around, including over the side.  I had some concern over water depth as the channel is clearly marked and the shore is not far outside the channel markers.  Our instructor was less concerned about this and his experience clearly trumped mine.  As our new helmsman tacked up the channel we'd go around the outside of the channel markers on the left so as to extend our tacks and cover more distance.  Near the end of the channel the instructor called out to bear off to port.  But we hadn't reached the last port channel marker yet.  Without anything else to do at that moment I began to look over the side.  10 seconds later I saw the telltale sign of bottom, that being sand that looks like it's moving; it isn't but we are.  Not wanting to be obnoxious I quickly called out "OH, so that's what the bottom looks like!"  I hear the instructor say "What??" and then we abruptly slowed to a stop and began to heel significantly.  Opps...  Intuitively the helmsman tried to turn into the wind to reduce the pressure on the sails and we crew moved over to the leeward side.  The instructor went to the tiller and vigorously tried to skull it back and forth.  These three things worked and we slowly moved off the bottom and back into deeper water.

Although it was funny, it was actually a good learning experience too.  We learned how to unground ourselves in one specific situation.  We also heard something about 'there are sailors who've grounded and there are liars' or some such thing.

We spent the rest of the day sailing with a freshened wind back towards the Coronado Bridge.  With our standard westerly winds we were on a nice beam reach all the way.  It was the funnest sailing of the day.

We turned left back into Coronado Harbor and sailed all the way to the dock.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow and hoping we'll have a bit more wind!

Sailing Ray