Kids at our yacht club do that with the Melges 24's...they straddle the boat
and rock it back and forth while using the tiller for direction so they can
make the tight turn into the crane well....
"Donal" wrote in message
...
Well, I've had two wonderful weeks of dinghy sailing and windsurfing in
Turkey.

I'm shocked by the quantity of political crap that has been posted here
during my absence. In fact, I'm not going to bother to read most of it.
Joe, felton, Walt and Jon all deserve a good kick up the backside!!

Anyway, I learned a couple of things in the last two weeks. Windsurfing
is
great fun, but you really should learn to do it before you reach 40!
Lasers are much easier to sail than Topaz's, - AND they go faster ....
especially downwind!!

Watching the youngsters was very interesting. The kids played a game
called "Pirates" using Topper Taz's. The Taz is a bit like an
Optimist(sp?). It is a beginner's dinghy.
There are two objectives in the game of Pirates.
The main objective is to capture your opponent's boat. You have to board
their boat and eject the occupant into the water. The secondary objective
is to simply capsize your opponent's boat. In other words, Pirates is a
game of total havoc! At any point in time about half of the 16 strong
fleet
was capsized!!

At first I was horrified, but I soon realised that the kids were learning
about sailing without realising that they were "learning". They were also
having great fun.
I watched one boy stand on the bow of his dinghy as he approached his
target. He was going downwind, and he seemed to be steering by shifting
his
weight from one foot to the other. He had learned to do this without any
lessons!!!

On the other hand, I attended a "Beginner's Clinic" before I took out a
Laser.



Regards


Donal
--

Katy,

I can make headway with my 29 Ft Pilothouse. I taught my crew on my
other boat, which was outboard powered to stand in the pulpit and rock
it the last couple of feet into the slip. I lot easier than cranking the
metal monster to life.

When I got the pilothouse, with the inboard, and a better sailer, we
developed a different docking technique.

When racing one time, the wind quit on me as we were turning the weather
mark. The tide was carrying me broad side right into the mark. I was
busting my gut trying to scull with the rudder but with a wheel helm, I
wasn't do to well. I figure we were going to be DSQ when suddenly the
boat started rocking. My Bowman was in the pulpit taking us around the
mark an into the edge of a cloud generated whisper of a breeze. I was
really fighting with myself about declaring the action as we were
nearing the committee boat when they blew the cancellation signal

Ole Thom