May 2011 Activity -- Sailing

Sailing Teacher (and LLPOF) Amy
and Dilettante Kathleen

Annapolis Sailing School
Severn River
Saturday, May 28th
12:00pm-2:00pm
Annapolis, MD
$79/person - half price through Groupon

There are worse ways to spend a few hours on a gorgeous holiday weekend than sailing the Chesapeake Bay. (Trying to get to Arlington on Route 66 to meet people for a run on Sunday morning would be one of those ways.)

Dressed in our nautical and maternity best, we met our sailing coach, Amy, on the dock of the sailing school and went aboard.

We spent the next two hours learning a little about how to sail and a lot about how much we enjoy being on a boat that someone else is steering while we sailed by the U.S. Naval Academy, a beautiful schooner and an osprey named Rupert. We did learn about different types of sailboats, types of sails (jib, mainsail, spinnaker), sailing terms (come about and tack), boat parts (tiller, rudder, cleat) and of course, the one part that made us laugh every time Teacher Amy mentioned it -- the winch. Because of the context in which it was stated, "Now, wrap the rope around the winch" the Dilettantes would (obviously) try and wrap it around the Dilettante seated nearest to them.

God, we are juvenile.

Dilettante Amanda getting ready to wrap the line around the winch.

Teacher Amy also taught us about the Poop Deck after Dilettante Amanda brought it up (see "juvenile" above). The teacher swore to us that the poop deck really was the vessel's bathroom, even though I said, "are you sure? I always thought it was just a name that meant something else on the boat." She assured us it was the bathroom, so at a cookout later that evening I happened to mention this and someone did a quick Google search on their iPhone and revealed that it, in fact, is a deck that forms the roof of a cabin built in the aft (rear) part of a ship, and the name comes from the French word for stern, la poupe (ha ha ha ha ha snort).

(Our teacher was probably telling the story to people at a cookout she attended that night, explaining how gullible newbie sailors were...)

My future partners in sailboat ownership.

Lunch followed at Pusser's in downtown Annapolis with a table overlooking Ego Alley. Summer rocks.