Every Saturday for the past 15 years, my dad and I have racing Rebel sailboats on Greenwood Lake. We're part of a club here on Greenwood Lake called the Awosting Yacht Squadron. Yesterday Kay came along to the race and videoed the entire thing. She chose a good day to come because my dad and I won.
Kay made me a little list of questions to go through so you can learn a little bit more about racing Sailboats on Greenwood Lake.
The first question is, how long have I been racing sailboats? I have been racing with my dad since I was about 14 or 15. I'm 29 now. So somewhere around 15 years.
The second question is, why is it important to me? We have a value at Teach 2 Teach to put family first. Sailboat racing is an awesome opportunity for my dad and me to get together and have a good time racing and to doing something fun together.
If you're not doing something with your family such as a sport or music as a reason for you to get together, you should. Find something that you can do with your family members so you can purposefully spend time with them.
My dad and I have been doing this kind of thing for a very long time. Before we raced sailboats, we waterskied. We would waterski every weekend. It's an awesome opportunity to make sure that we spend time together
The next question is, what lessons have you learned from sailing? We've learned a lot of lessons from sailing. One of them is to be patient with ourselves. It takes a long time to learn how to sail well. An especially long time when you're in a racing scenario where you need to go as fast as possible.
This is a lot like music lessons. Learning an instrument and learning how to sail are very similar in several ways. It takes a long time, especially if you're only doing it a couple times a week. If we were racing every single day, we would have cut our learning curve by a lot.
We've learned a lot, though. We used to lose all the time, but yesterday we won! We're starting to win a lot more now. So, this goes to show, stick with it! No matter what you're learning, stick with it. Be patient with yourself and realize that sometimes learning can take a very long time.
The next question is, what is your favorite part of sailing? Sailing in high winds is my favorite. When the wind is blowing hard it makes all the difference in the world.
One of my least favorite parts of sailing is when the wind is dead. You're sitting in the boat with the Sun beating down on you and it drives me crazy. I'm trying to continue paying attention, but when the boat's not moving it can be very difficult to focus on the sails and watch where the wind is going. But when the wind is high it's exciting! It feels like you're flying down the lake. It's awesome.
The last question here is, would you encourage other people to start sailing? Absolutely! Make sure that you find an experienced sailor to teach you. That can cut your learning curve significantly.
Make sure that you are doing something fun with it. If you go out by yourself and sail around and you don't have a purpose such as sailboat racing, then it could be a little bit dull. Make sure you join a club that does racing or events. This will make it much more fun compared to sailing alone. I would absolutely encourage you to try sailing if you haven't tried it before.