Sailing Camp on SF Bay

In all my hand-wringing about not sailing much this Summer, I had forgotten my favorite reason to sail.



Kids have fun.

We took Lady Bug out for her paces in 10-15 knots last weekend. First thing I did was shake out the summertime reef. Second thing I did was to put it back in when I realized the girls wanted to hang out on the weather rail. Nothing safety-oriented at all but just that put their feet closer to the water and increased the chances of the all-important foot dipping in the chop.

I came up with a game where they get points for certain likely sailing-oriented events: 5 points for seeing a mermaid, 2 points for getting feet wet, 3 points for someone yelling ahoy back at them, 12 points for kicking a shark in its snout, and so on.

But they came up with a better idea: sailing camp. These two, plus another swimming friend, are going to be campers at the Lady Bug Sailing Camp. What this entails is me taking them sailing more often. We'll have dockside activities: learning knots, cleaning my boat, climbing the mast, and sailboat component identification (quick, what's a barberhauler?). Then we'll go sail. If it's too windy or not windy enough, the El Toro goes out.

Seems like a great idea and exactly why I have a sailboat in the first place.