How I learned to Sail

At the encouragement of my daughter in her blog..(see the side bar) I am relating the story of how I learned to sail.

In the 8th grade my dad was the VP. The counselor and the school had a beautiful lagoon side home in Sausalito. She offered to have her husband teach me how to sail. So I learned from him and the little El Torro (a total 8 foot long single sailed dingy) the ins and outs of sailing.

I was hooked. Together we were both too big for the little boat but somehow I learned and we didn't get too too much wet.

Dad had joined a stock club when he was teaching in the Jr. High. Somehow this stock club had made some good choices and their was actually about 500 free dollars to spend on a boat. I searched the want ads like crazy for a boat that would fit our needs as Dad was determined to spend this money on something fun.

We looked at old mossy Lido 14s and out of sync snipes, and we often went down to Lake Vasona in Los Gatos and rented a Chrysler boat. It was a jewel. They were about 16 feet long and fiberglass. I could sail it up one side and down the other. We then decided that we were after a sloop on that experience. The Chrysler boats were way out of our leage. Most of them were around 3000 dollars.

Somehow Puff came up for sale. We took off and bought it.. Dad even negotiated a sail on the bay with owner's new boat.. a 54 foot boat with a boom on its jib. He thought it was a great chance to get a crew and sail. It was set up for him to sail by himself but it was really much more fun when you have a crew. This is true with all sailing.

We waited and waited for a trailer to come in. That winter the snows had pounded the Sierras and stuff like that took forever to get over. In the mean time we rented a trailer and took puff to her home waters.. Merced Lake by San Francisco State University. Dad bought the trailer out of money he saved from home teaching.

The first time we put puff in.. the wind came up and dad was on the wrong side of the boat and he nearly bit it. and so did the boat. Puff was a good learners boat.. so I shoved the tiller had to the right and she came around into the wind. Dad was a little shook up after that and so was i. I was as close as we ever came to dumping the boat.

We had many fun times with "puff" we trailered her to the half moon bay. We even sailed her int he lagoons around Palo Alto when they were shipping Napalm out for the Viet Nam War. They were not too happy to see a sailboat our running around their docks. We went back to Vasonia and even raced her a couple of times in Lake Merit in Oakland.

One race we almost won until the tiller broke off the ruder. We were leading and dad got back and tried to steer it while I tried to control the main sheet. We ended up last. It was still great fun.

Thanks for letting me share my memories of sailing..

Love
pat