Sailing!

Our friends, Justin and Kerstin, have decided to take up sailing! (First, if you don't know Justin and Kerstin, they are some of our oldest friends. Like, they knew us before we were John and Shannon and when we were just John. and Shannon. We have years and years of shared experiences and the incriminating stories and photos to accompany them. So much so, that I could have a whole blog and just put one of those stories up every day for a year, easy. hmmm, maybe I should, I don't think either one of them read this blog :)) Anyway, Justin was looking for volunteers who were free during the day to come out and sail with him so that he can perfect his skills as captain. I guess a good thing about not having a job is the ability to take advantage of some of that stuff, so I did it. It was a super windy day and we didn't know for sure if we'd be able to go, but it turned out OK, and Justin and I are brave, so we did it. We got the boat all set up, he got inside and gave me my instructions for unhooking it as he backed away from the dock. Just as I unhooked it, a gust came and pushed the boat more quickly than I anticipated and I ended up like this. I hung there for a minute and tried to pull the boat in, to no avail, and then went through my options. I had two. Let go and belly flop into the water, or hold on tight and jump my feet into the water and hang on to the boat and try to pull myself in. Choosing the option with the most dryness, I opted to hold on and let go of the dock with my feet. So then I was like this (but with a cute hat). The worst thing is that I couldn't even swing my leg high enough to get onto the boat and my arms were so sore from the massive workouts of the week that I couldn't pull myself up. Justin came over and reached down to help pull my foot up and I finally got into the boat. Now, in retrospect, both Justin and I should have been clever enough to photo document this, but the story will have to suffice. Once I was in, we had a brilliant time. It was windy, and we sailed more downstream than upstream, but it was an awesome day. We got pretty good with our switching choreography (OK, that might not be quite the right lingo) when the sail had to switch sides and we saw a huge barge up close and watched some serious pro sailors out taking advantage of the big winds. It was cool.


We joked that it will be a while before someone beats me as "quickest person overboard" so this morning he sent me this: