Let Me Take You On a C Cruise
Chapter 2 of 4
being the second installment where Nicim picks up her Hobie for her first sail as a skipper. Does her old skipper have other ideas?
Please go HERE for a cool primer on sailing terms.
Owning a Hobie Cat is a four-step process. You have to buy the boat, get it to water, rig it properly and learn to operate all the parts without falling over (or overboard). Then you get a crew (you tell them when, where and how�.and it�s always THEIR FAULT) and go sailing.
I�d already handled step one and was waiting with bated breath for some fine young man to respond to my bait of an ad for a crew. Step two slapped me in the face when I met Dave at the marina on the cold misty morning of my debut race as a skipper. Not only did he already have a new crew lined up for the next regatta (mutiny!), but he expected me to drive my teeny-tiny Honda myself 50 miles to the practice site while towing a 200-foot trailer carrying a boat larger than my house (in our previous lives, he drove the car while I navigated, appropriately pointing out when to turn around and go back to the road we just missed.)
I�ll show him! We took off cross-country over hill and dale, river and bridge. It was the bridge that did me in. You see, I play a game at tollbooths where I try to beat the light by getting as close to the basket as possible, flipping the coin, and gunning the motor.
Now it is a well-known fact that most women have difficulty estimating such measurements as distance and length (a shortcoming to which most men contribute regularly and for which they are exceedingly grateful). As I flipped the coins, I glanced into my rear view mirror and found the boat was at least 10 feet wider than the booth opening, and there were large concrete bumpers an inch away from ripping two thousand dollars of gelcoat off my port hull. That�s when I learned step two would actually be made up of several little steps � like backing up and going forward. Dave generously offered to get my boat through the booth (he may have had some incentive from the police trying to clear the traffic jam behind me) but I naturally refused.
With only a few additional incidents (no, I did not hug the shoulder for the next 40 miles), we arrived at the beach. Getting the boat from trailer to water was easy. I simply tugged helplessly on the closest two-ton hull while wearing my most daring wetsuit top and six husky sailors took it upon themselves to demonstrate their chivalry (I figured this pose should work until I whomped them in a race, or figured out just how many $100 parts it takes to turn a Honda into a truck.). Time to sail�..almost.
Just what kind of seedy saga is this? A C cruise? A no-see crews? How can anyone see anything through the mist, or is this the kind of story best viewed through a fog? Stay tuned for the next filmy edition of �As the Hulls Fly�
To read all episodes in this series:
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