Twenty highly heat-resistant sailors enjoyed some beautiful breezes on the Potomac on Saturday afternoon.
Cameron B., Connor C., Connor K., Graham, Ian, James R., Jonathan R., Kalen, Matthias, Nick, Noah, Patrick, and Tigo were joined by adults David R., Misa, Todd, Mitch, Jennifer, Steven Z., and Patricia.
The sailing school at Washington Sailing Marina has offered excellent, experienced instructors in past years for our outing. And Saturday's captains were no exception.
After tailored fittings of PFDs, it was time to rig the Flying Scots. If you are curious about the boats, here's a link with some good info: flyingscot.com/flyingscot.html. Note the picture at the bottom of the page regarding stability -- try that trick on most other daysailers and you'll be swimming.
Each Scot was shoved off the dock by our fearless coordinator (Alex) a bit before 2pm. There are no motors on the Scots--so they were immediately under-sail once away.
Each instructor was equipped with a radio, as was Alex. And Alex monitored the sailboats from a small powerboat.
The first sailing task was to navigate the narrow channel running south-east from the marina to the Potomac River proper. Reference earlier brisk winds--coming pretty much straight out of the southeast.
And just for added challenge, the channel has been significantly narrowed by encroaching hydrilla. Crisp maneuvers were in order--it seemed the next tack started scarcely 30 seconds after coming about from the last.
But the captains and crews handled it all with aplomb. Open water brought bigger surf and stiffer wind. But again, everyone made it look easy.
After all the hard work going upwind, the return to port was a relaxing (but quite speedy) downwind run. And all vessels eased back to the docks.
After a quick derigging and unloading, we all bid farewell to the instuctors and headed home.
Prior to Saturday, only 2 of the 13 boys had been on small sailboats. So I'm quite pleased the troop was able to introduce sailing to these guys. It's also worth noting that there is a Sea Scout Troop in Arlington (seascout1942.com) that has been around since 1912. These days, Sea Scouts is a coed group of kids 13-21 years old.
Mike Forrer