Conversations

It was the club's Thanksgiving dinner celebration this weekend, perhaps my favorite "party" of the year. As usual things went off without a hitch, lots of good food found its way onto our plates, and lots of good friends gathered over the course of the weekend for many a good conversation. One though, stood out.

A good friend and very experienced sailor, someone whose opinion I value and who has taught Deb and I a lot about sailing, was pretty blunt in suggesting that we are nowhere near ready to go off adventuring in Kintala. He points out, and quite correctly, that I have never been even nominally in charge when picking up a mooring ball, setting the hook in a busy, blue water anchorage, entering a strange port, checking in with a new harbor master, plotting a multi-day run, docking in a strange marina, navigating a busy shipping lane, or mastering any of a dozen other skills necessary to keep out of harm's (or just other sailor's) way. My guess is there have been a few debates among our friends at the marina over just how much experience is enough.

Those doing the debating are seasoned charter customers. Just off hand the places I know they have explored, often many times, include Greece and other ports in the Med, the BVIs, SVIs, Bahamas, Keys, Puerto Rico, most of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, San Fransisco Bay, and parts of the Oregon and Washington coasts. And this just from the stories they tell. Some of these folks go pretty far afield two and three times a year and there always seems to be a trip in the works. In fact, there are at least two being planned in the next couple of months.

These are not wanna-be lake sailors hoping to be cruisers.  They are seasoned wanderers who happen to live and work in and around central IL, where little Lake Carlyle is the only place they can go play when not off getting soaked in salt spray. They have earned the right to have opinions worth listening to.  (A rare treasure in our world today.)

Of course Deb and I are regularly invited to go along ... and we would love to do just that. There is, however, one huge problem. We own a 42 foot sailboat that needs to be readied for blue water sailing. Pretty much every spare dime we have ends up in the boat. (Not to mention every extra minute.) We could take a week long charter to the BVI, or we could buy a self steering system. We could go on another Bahama's Bash, (friend Joel is heading out on one in a couple of weeks) or we could buy a wind generator.

Others are a bit less critical of our lack of experience.  They know of the trip around Long Island, the week spent on a Cat in Pensacola, and the Bahama Bash that took us on a night passage across a playful Gulf Stream, twice. They have watched us go from complete newbies, people to look out for, to capable lake sailors. They watched us go out to learn in Nomad when others were coming in to escape the building winds and waves. And, most critical to least, they approve of our choice of Kintala and the work we are putting into her.

So I don't know. We are in too deep really, to back up now. We took the trips we could to see if this was a real thing we wanted to do and then to narrow down the choice of a boat. The boat is on the lake. The work has to be done (and paid for). The house is for sale. Down sizing our life to fit on a Tartan 42 continues. Though launch day will never be set in stone, (too much an airplane driver to think that is a good idea ... ever) each day is a day closer.

How much of what I don't know can hurt me? I don't know.

Conversations.

Some of which happened with Kintala on an easy reach in light winds, ghosting across a mirror-like lake. Pam, Bill, Spero and Al joined us for what may be the last sail of the season. They watched Deb and I get Kintala off the pier, willing to help but accepting that we like to practice when ever we can. They approve of our change of plan to start out on the East Coast and slowly work our way into blue water sailing while field (or water) testing our work on the boat. (There must be newbies that start out in salt and never spend any time inland, right?) They would like to see us get some more supervised blue water experience, but also suggest that, sooner or later if one is going to go cruising, one just has to go. Cruising is different from chartering, living aboard different than going on vacation.

Lots of good conversations on what was a breathtakingly beautiful weekend in central IL, getting late in November.