Livin' it up in Okinawa

Wednesday, August 02, 2006



It's finally August and I thought my time in Diego would be over by now but I'm still here. I can't complain too much. For the month of July since my lasting posting I learned how to sail a Hobie Catamaran. At the marina you have to sail the smaller Laser Pico for a total of 8 hours before they let you move up to the Hobie. I think my total was 7 but they still let me graduate to the bigger boat. The first day I took it out with Will and Bill the marina staff worker Mahan didn't have time to show us how to rig the sails. So he told us to go rig it ourselves, and we said no problem how hard can it be. Needless to say we had the main sail on all wrong and the jib sail didn't even have the right rope. After Mahan helped us fix all of that we cruised out into the lagoon with no supervision. Of course Mahan told us to stay close. Winds were good and afer cruising back and forth in front of the marina we were getting bored and deicided to do some capsize drills. For some reason it took all three of us pulling on one pontoon to bring her back upright. After the third turnover we had it down, but I got caught under the pontoon just as it was coming down into the water as we got the boat upright. It gave me a pretty good sized knot on my forehead. It's hard to see in the photo but you can just make out the red part of the bump.





The fourth time we flipped it wasn't on purpose. I turned downwind too fast and our front pontoon dug into the water. It felt like a car crash as we went from 15-20 mph to an instant stop! Bill got thrown into the mast and ended up with a good sized bruise on his thigh. Will was luckily thrown clear of the rigging and I managed to miss the mast too. Yesterday was the fourth time I've taken out the Hobie and the boss at the marina, Rick, signed off my license for sailing the Hobie without adult supervision.