10 April 2006

You have a fender out!!!

Some of you may remember the fender overboard incident with the J/24 last July. Basically, this guy tried to run me down and make a joke about it so I made a chump out of him.

Karma got me back yesterday. I was cruising a bit ahead of a J/105 on her way out for some little race they were doing. Camille was steering and probably cutting a rather impressive snake wake but she and I were having too much fun to notice. Suddenly some guy from the J105 sprints to the bow and starts yelling at us.

I cock my head sideways to indicate to him that I'm now listening and realize he's telling me that we have a fender hanging over our port side. Of course I want it there but it would take a while to explain that to him so I just yell, "and would you believe it, I have two dangling on starboard too!" I got a good laugh out of that, he went back to the cockpit thinking I'm an idiot and Camille continued to steer directly for the mark.

For my readership's edification, we were only going out to mark c and heading right back in. With a five year old at the helm there was no way in h3ll I was going to leave her alone in the cockpit for the 21 seconds it takes to take off a fender. So I suffered the indignity of being made fun of all the way out and back. But my little girl is now an expert helmsman making it all worthwhile.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know man....I would have taken the fenders up.

Anonymous said...

Sounds likeyou have your priorities right. :D

Ant said...

ITs cool, I think its soo important to get your kids involved in sailing, makes them proper aware of water...the beauty of it but also the power and danger.. its all about respect... the problems gonna be when the kids are older... no point forcing them into sailing if they don't want to.. nurture the experience enjoy it while you can and if they love it they'll want to do it...

EVK4 said...

Eli,
I should have probably just sent her out there to learn by fire....I'll get it right.

Anonymous said...

She looked like she was well in control. My bet is that she'll be singlehanding within the year