A colleague of Rhabyt's who is a member of a sailing club helped us get Ruby into a sailing class for kids. The classes only require a membership fee of $40 a month and she gets her own little boat (an Optimist) to sail, while the teacher goes along next to and behind her in a little motorized dinghy.
Ruby had her first lesson on the water last week and found it scary and confusing, but fun. The teachers kept telling her to do things but she hadn't learned the names of the parts of the boat well enough so it was difficult to follow directions, and she had no experience with how it feels to sail a boat. But she came back saying she wanted to do it some more!
Above is a picture of the sailing school (before Ruby was there), like two bunches of ducklings with their mamas - out in the middle of the Adriatic! Ruby is learning to sail the smaller kind of boat (if you want to see any of the pictures on this blog more clearly, just click on them and you'll see them bigger).
Here's what Ruby says about that first sailing lesson:
"The water was dark blue with a greenish top. The sky tasted misty and yet it was perfekly clear as blue crystil. At first there was no wind, but as time went on it got stronger until it was whisiling past my ears.
I almost capsised 3 times! Every time it happened I felt fear dart through me like a cat. At first I did not understand, but after my teacher explande about the ruder [rudder], then I understood."
2 comments:
Wow, sailing your own boat-- so exciting! When you come home maybe you can teach Uncle Paul a thing or two about how to sail. ;-)
Does the teacher name the parts of the boat in English? There's enough to learn without trying to master all that in Croatian, I expect!
Love,
Auntie Natasha
I learnt to sail on the Optimist when I was your age Ruby - we didn't always have much wind on the Rhine where I was, and discovered that you can move the boat along by wiggling the rubber fast. The teachers didn't like that though...!
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