This post may contain affiliate links*
Aye, Aye, Captain!
Kyle grew up racing and sailing boats with his Dad, Scott, on many lakes in central Minnesota as well as the Great Lakes. His sailing skills were groomed and taught for years – and his dad was a very good teacher. Kyle can remember helping his dad from many ominous situations on the boat because Kyle learned to be a good First Mate. But now he’s the Captain, and he’s got me as the First Mate … yikes!
Got Skillz?
I need to learn how to sail, and quickly! But in the words of Phil Dunphy, “Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.” Oh sure, we had a short stint sailing and racing our 17’ Thistle, Attitude, on Geist Reservoir. We named her Attitude to remember to always have a good attitude … did it work?
Well, one season we came in last place for every single race – except the last one, which we came in 2nd to last! But … we are still married, so something worked!
Read All About It!
We bought SV Zeke E Boy in October 2021, and I decided that I needed to brush off my sailing skills again, so I followed much of the guidelines that I shared in the article, Learning Something New. I started watching how-to videos on sailing on YouTube, and reading blogs from other sailors. After finally settling into our new house and unpacking our library of books, I found that we kept old sailing handbooks. I checked out books and guides from the library on sailing, and how to tie knots, and I started practicing in the middle of winter. It seemed that the same concepts that I learned on our small, open-hull sailboat still applied to the big one we now had, but this was all theory for now.
Cruising Guide
Kyle’s mom, Mary, went to a women’s only Cruising seminar in the late 1990s, and she gave me a book from it called, “The Cruising Woman’s Advisor: How to Prepare for the Voyaging Life” by Diana Jessie. While some of the information was dated, and Kyle & I are not preparing to live aboard or circumnavigate the globe – at the moment anyway, there was some very helpful advice that I found in the book. I’ll share a few excerpts:
“An early cruising lesson for me was learning to live with things that I cannot change … Move slowly, bite your trip into small chunks and do everything you can to build your confidence in yourself and your boat. Don’t be afraid to turn back. There is no shame in turning back, and you should never regret it. Take those small steps first … Pride pushes people to do stupid things.”
“The part of me that is fearful is always with me, whether I’m driving on the freeway or sailing across an ocean … Worry pushes you to learn about safety gear, how to reef sails, and how to read weatherfaxes. In the worrying process you make lists, read, and attempt to plan for every circumstance … You need to be particularly afraid of a complacency and a smugness, and the fact that your own experience is any assurance that you’re not going to die.”
“Learning all you can about the things that you fear and how to cope with them allows you to exercise control over yourself and your environment … If you allow fear to occupy your attention, it can paralyze you mentally and physically, thereby robbing you of your power and options. Sheer fear has never done anyone any good. But taking intelligent action on your own behalf will rescue you and evaporate fear at the same time.”
Wow! These quotes truly motivated me to harness my fears, learn as much as I could off the water and try to prepare for our sailing adventures on the water together.
I’d like to make a deposit
In addition to learning the sailing skills, I also found that Kyle & I needed to be on the same page together. This starts way before we get to the boat – way before we even think about going to the boat! Years ago we read a book, “His Needs, Her Needs” by Willard Harley, Jr., where the concept of the love bank came up. “Figuratively speaking, I believe that each of us has a Love Bank. It contains many different accounts, one for each person we know. Each person either makes deposits or withdrawals whenever we interact with him or her.”
How can I help?
Earlier this summer, Kyle asked, What do you need to understand how to leave the dock? Do I need to put together a step-by-step infographic or what? And I said, No, I think we just need to love each other more. You see, I was thinking that I can listen and learn from Kyle in this new situation, but I didn’t want to be yelled at – especially under pressure situations – even though it may have called for it. Now, we are absolutely NOT perfect in this area, but recently one of our dock neighbors commented at how nice we were being to each other when we docked the boat. Don’t get cocky, Kara! That’s when we get into trouble!
Goals & Milestones
After our crazy journey Bringing SV Zeke E Boy home this summer, we were humbled and thankful to still be alive. We recognized that we’re dealing with a massive body of water that can be deadly but most importantly will do what it wants to do! Our whole approach for this sailing season changed. We decided that each time we took the boat out we were going to target different milestones and growth areas. Taking the crawl, walk, run approach, but we’re pretty much sticking with only crawling this summer! 🙂
Some of our milestones and goals for this summer include:
Safely leave and come back to the dock alone
Motor the boat around for a few hours
Unhook from shore power and make sure the batteries are still charging, so we can turn the boat back on again … as if we were sailing
Put up the sails, and turn off the engine
Float the sailboat and swim off of it away from shore
Document and practice emergency SOPs
Continue learning how to drive the boat (Kara)
Learn how to put up the sails (Kara)
Journey to a new harbor
Overnight at a new marina
Make a radio call to raise a bridge
And more…
Enjoy the Journey
We’re new to this, and we want to keep learning how to get better – how to be an “expert”. There was a study by K. Anders Ericsson, PhD, that found it takes over 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at it. That’ll take nearly 10 years if you spend 20 hours a week on it! Well, we’re going to be sailing on the Great Lakes so we’ll have a limited sailing season so it will take us longer to become “experts” at sailing! Here’s to enjoying the process!
That was something I really worked on in myself when we were remodeling our homes. I often wanted to skip forward to the finished product but when our projects tended to take years, I soon realized that I was wishing away my life! Oh, how I wish I could have that time back!!! I would continually repeat to myself, just enjoy the process, Kara. Don’t wish your life away.
The same thing applies to sailing … we’re going slow but we’re having fun along the way! We hope to see you on the water this summer!
What are your thoughts?
Let us know what you think of our exciting sailing adventures by sharing your feedback in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you!
– Kara from Zeke Life
Live like Zeke
You’re such a good boy!
