I'm sailing! I'm sailing.

A few years ago, I booked a vacation in Utah to ski at Park City. By booking online, I was given an offer for three free magazine subscriptions. I found two with no problem, but it was kind of hard to find a third one I would be interested in. Finally, I chose Sail Magazine. Reading it over the next year got me really interested in sailing, and I started to think about what it might be like to own a boat of my own someday (I know what it's like, actually - a boat is a hole in the water in which you throw your money). This was mildly dumb in the eyes of Emily, reading Sail magazine in Frankfort, Kentucky. What's the point when you're living in a landlocked state?

Last month, however, I was invited on a sailing trip by the President of the Wharton Sailing Club. I talked to Emily, and we agreed it was one of the best opportunities to learn about the sport and see if I'd really enjoy it.

Two full days of instruction and sailing in the Chesapeake Bay, I can say it was a blast. Also, I'm halfway to my keel boat certification, where I can rent a boat (up to about 26-feet) to take out when on vacation - much cheaper than actually owning a boat. Here's some pictures from the trip:

Downtown Annapolis. Very pricey place to live, not so pricey to get ice cream. We made sure to stop here twice.

The marina. Been a few years since I spent some time at a marina.

This was our crew. Four guys who had never been on a sail boat, and an instructor from J-World.

The sailing club took out 7 yachts, all of them J/80 sailboats. Each boat has an instructor and 4 crew (us). The "80" refers to decimeters, so it's about 26 feet long.

Being a sailing club comprised mostly of business students, we had to make things competitive. So we squeezed in 3 races into a 2-day sailing trip. This picture is from one of the races. The race begins with a designated starting line that nobody can cross until a countdown timer reaches zero (if you cross early, it doesn't count so you have to circle around and cross it again). Our boat was extremely good at timing the beginning such that we crossed the start line only a second or two after the beginning of the race and often at full speed.

Our crew worked as follows: one crew member to steer the direction of the ship.

One person to work the main sail.

Finally, two people to work the jib, which soon became my favorite role. Whenever you tack, the people controlling the jib have to work in tandem to quickly capture the wind as you move through the point of no sail. We got our speed from around 20-seconds for a tack down to about 4-5 seconds, which was quite impressive. The jibe maneuver was fun as well.