Originally Posted by
MoAlpha
Wow, that looks like fun! I bet it’s planing when the J/80s are still digging holes in the water.
Compete for a living?
Through an odd set of circumstances, Mrs. GeneJockey and I got to take advantage of free sailing classes at Olympic Sailing Club in Berkeley. We both actually passed the beginning course in Cal 20s, and entered the Intermediate course, in J24s. It was fun, but we discovered we each had an unfixable problem. I get seasick when running before the wind - feels like wallowing, rather than speeding along at the zippy pace you're actually going. Mrs. GeneJockey by contrast had a problem with sailing close to the wind - when the boat was heeled over and she was on the windward side, she couldn't convince herself she wasn't going to fall right over the leeward gunwale into the water. Kind of like the feeling you get in a steep balcony in a theater, that no matter how far back your seats are, if you lean too far forward you'll fall right over the railing onto the seats below.
But we have a couple months of weekend fun discovering it - sailing for a couple hours on the Bay, learning things we'd never even thought of before, wolfing down food at some old-style seafood lace in Berkeley after.