More Tacking

In class today we rigged the boats and spent our time learning to tack. Another gal who missed her class yesterday (it was raining) was put in our boat for a make-up session. It was pretty fun - we ran figure eights around two bouys, tacking back and forth a few times each.

Erin also went over points of sail and such in the classroom - again, not much new material here outside the books, but good to go over it.

I was a little embarassed today - I pronounced bowline as "bowlin," and while I believe that's the proper way to pronounce it, I felt like a poseur. Same thing when I referred to "blocks" and "sheets." I suppose I won't think twice about this sort of stuff later on.

I did find that tacking without the tiller extension was a little hard. My arms aren't long enough to push the tiller away from me without shifting my weight to the leeward side of the boat. With Ed already on that side, it's a lot of weight going to leeward while turning to windward, and sometimes feels a bit uncomfortable, as if we're going to tip over. So I use the tiller extension, even though I'm told we shouldn't. Not sure the reasoning behind this.


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