I went from not having sailed in years to sailing once last month and then three straight days this weekend!

Madison, Sam, Mandi, and I took a boat out from Coronado again today.  I had fun.  I'm pretty sure Sam had fun.  Madison, and therefore Mandi?  Maybe not so much.

We left at noon trying to catch as much wind as we could.  There wasn't much.  We tried to follow the wind where we could see it.  I could see it across the bay near the Navy Ships over at 32nd street.  We motored over there and put the sails up.  That part went fine, but Madison really didn't enjoy wearing her new life jacket.  We tried a few different options with the buckles and it just wasn't working.  Mandi took her below where she could loosen the vest but then Mandi wasn't enjoying not being topside and not being able to see the horizon...  Not wanting to get my wife sea sick on this first, of hopefully many, family sailing outings, I suggested she sit on the sole of the cockpit and hold Maddie in her lap without the life vest.  She actually sort of had the life vest on backwards, not that that's any safer....  Anyway, this configuration seemed to calm Madison and allowed Mandi to be topside and somewhat part of the action.

I showed Sam how to use the winches to pull the jib sheets and how to release the jib on the leeward side.  He seemed to pick this up pretty well with the exception that he consistently wanted to pull the jib sheets in with his hands first before getting some wraps on the winch.  Luckily the winds were light enough this wasn't too much of a problem but we'll need to work on this next time out.

We tacked a few times near the naval station and then I wanted to try to head under the bridge.  We tried to reach our way to the bridge but the closer we got to the bridge the less wind we'd had.  Without wind we just kind of bounced around on the various wakes making the ride less than fun for everyone.  So I turned us around to try to ride what little wind we could.  This proved pointless so after three hours we decided to head in.

A couple times I thought we'd found some wind and would try some sailing again but it just wasn't meant to be on this day.

Sam and I had fun and now we know we need to find another option to keep Madison comfy on the boat.  We'll find that and get her out there again.

Ciao,
Sailor Ray