A day of a hard Sailing!

  “What’s happening?”

  “We're going down Dad!” shouted Klaus.

  “Watch out!” I shouted without looking at Klaus while the boat was tipping on top of us.  “Fetch the boat!”

I swam behind the boat. The wind pushed the boat away from us.

I made an effort to swim as fast as I could.  The life jacket was getting in the way.

  “If I don’t catch it soon it’s going to be too late!” I thought.

I looked to the beach. “We are too far," I thought.  “Not good!” I thought.

I swam fast and grabbed onto the boat and pulled the main sail down in the water to slow down the boat.  I looked up to see how easy it was going to be to climb up the tilted boat from where I was and hop to the other side to get it back up.  I saw Klaus’s hands grabbing at the side of the deck and then I saw his face looking down at me in the water.

  “Pull the boat back!” I shouted.

Nothing happened. 

  “It may be too heavy for Klaus,” I thought. 

I lifted myself up, pulling hard with my arms, I sat on the side with one leg on each side and slowly put both of my feet on the centerboard close to the boat and let my body back.  Immediately the boat started coming up. 

  “Watch out Klaus!”

The wind tipped the boat on top of us again.

I have been in these situations before, I had to get the boat back up and start sailing again.  The day was sunny and the water was green, waves crashed around us with a silver shine. The water felt good on my body, refreshing.  It was familiar to me.  

 This time the bottom of the boat was facing the wind.  I climbed up holding onto the centerboard to the top and pulled back.  Klaus was on the other side.  The boat stood up gently this time.

  “Get on board Klaus!”

  He was up in no time.

  “Give me a hand!” The boat was catching speed and I had no strength left to climb by the side on my own.

  “Give me a hand!” I shouted again as I grabbed harder onto the side of the boat that was moving faster and faster.

Klaus stared at me. 

I had to do something different to get on board, Klaus was not reacting.  I slid to the back and pulled myself in.

  “Pull on the Jib!” I shouted. “Pull the jib now.” The flapping of the jib tangled the sheet.

Klaus was not reacting to my commands.  I pulled on the main sail sheet and the boat started flying, cutting through the water like a warm butter knife. I was having fun!

I didn’t look at Klaus’s face, I sensed that he was not enjoying the ride.  I focused on the boat, checked for damages caused by the flipping.  I checked the stays that hold the mast in place, everything looked fine.  The wind was gusty and I didn’t want to flip again. The beach was getting further and further away, fast.

  “We should go back!” shouted Klaus.

  “OK, watch out when we turn!”

We turned as slow as I could, got on the other side and pulled gently on the sheet.  The boat reacted like when you let go of the reins of a horse.  I gathered we were at 18 knots. 

  “Pull on the Jib! Pull the jib.”

Maybe he didn’t want to pull more because we could flip again.

  “Pull on the Jib! Pull the jib.”

Nothing.

I knew that I didn’t have much time to enjoy the speed, the feeling of when the boat wants to start flying on top, faster and faster, flowed through my body!

It was Saturday and we had decided the day before to come back to Puerto Aldea where the wind is always strong.  We arrived after lunch, as the day got sunny.  We took our time to prepare the boat.  We had troubles setting the mast since the wind was hard. Klaus warned me that it was too windy and perhaps we should abort the idea of sailing for the day.

After four legs, I thought it was prudent to go back to the beach.  Klaus was not having a good time. We got to the beach easy.  After we hauled the boat out of the water, we exchanged our thoughts.  We were exhausted.