Welcome back. Didn't know you were gone, thought you were in the
politico threads, which I've KFed.

Scotty

"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
--