Wendy, you will do fine. btw, I crewed on a boat owned by a Navy pilot and it
turned out all the rest of the crew had flying experience as well. Owner never
said he chose crew for flying experience, but it seems likely.

flying skills are mostly different from sailing skills (nav, as you said is
much the same), but the talent necessary to do either is the same. Good
sailors as well as good flyers have excellent coordination, can sense when
things have changed, notice a 50 rpm increase of decrease in the engine, hear
the difference in sounds of the air with tiny changes in speed, understand
weather (pilots probably far more so than sailors), keep their eyes open and
don't do dumb things, to name just a few. That you don't have the "muscle
memory" for sailing yet doesn't mean you won't get it. You will, and probably
quite quickly. Besides, the VAST majority of sailing is under pretty benign
conditions, even more so with good planning. Lin and Larry Pardy say in all
thei years on the water they have seen really nasty conditions only about 1 day
in a hundred, and Lin says the only time they got knocked down was the time she
(she takes blames for the decision, as apparently she does most of the
navigation planning) felt they were pushing their luck a bit leaving port when
they did, but they were getting a little cocky. (Sorta like the pilot who
takes off with ceilings at 2,000 feet and lowering who convinces himself the
cover will break up). Lin Pardy's voyage planning is so thorough she and Larry
sailed from South Africa to Brazil (across that nasty piece of water called the
South Atlantic) and never saw winds above 25 knots.

flying story: my baby bro when learning to fly had his instructor tell him of
a flight the instructor made in known icing condition, the plane gradually
getting heavier, the carb heat on full and the rpm dropping. The guy landed on
a short, unused runway of an abandoned airport (freeway had been built through
it), let the engine run until the carb ice melted while he banged the ice off
the wings with a gloved hand, then took off again to continue his flight. My
brother's flight instructor, on a training flight, told him that. Go figure.

Wendy, you will be fine. And remember what what Chuck Yeager said about
"widow-maker" airplanes, i.e. everytime you hear a pilot talk about one you
know you are talking with a pilot who will soon tell you that *he* successfully
flew that dangerously wicked aircraft. [grin] same in sailing, except the
doom and gloom sailors haven't sailed beyond the breakwater.