We've been living here for a long time. When we got here, Lee Anna was a year younger than Sarah Claire is now! And we've been riding sailboats on the river since the first week we were here. Not every week, but we've got to be in the 20s by now. Sometimes it's really windy and we worry that the boat might be blown over. Other times there's no wind at all, and they push us out a little ways with a pole, and we get to sit still and watch the sunset. Once, the wind wasn't blowing and they used a motor to push us around the river. Until the motor ran out of fuel, anyway, then they used another motor boat to pull us back to the dock in the dark. That was fun.
But this weekend we took some visiting friends on a sailboat cruise and had a new experience. When we first shoved off, we noticed that we seemed to be drifting more than sailing. Our sail wasn't catching much wind at all. The captain was a little younger, and perhaps a little less experienced, than many of the sailboat captains. When I asked him why we were drifting, he pointed up and noted that the sail was short. Well, okay, Cap'n, but it looks to me like it's just stuck and bunched up instead of being spread out. About that time we started to bump into another boat docked on the side of the river, so our guy had to push us off again.
Then he started calling out to all passers-by, asking them to pull us. A smaller motorboat came along after a few more minutes, and a second sailor-man got on with us. Before long, we noticed that our captain was cruising away on the little motor boat. The new captain then did what we hadn't seen before: He climbed up the mast to loosen the stuck sail! Our guest in town was 20 years younger than the sailor (and the current blogger) and also several kilos lighter than both of us. So I suggested that he climb up instead. He politely declined.
But after just a few minutes, and two trips up the mast, our guy had the sail unfurled and catching lots of wind.
And a good time was had by all.
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