Oh, No …
What am I getting myself into?
We were at the New Mexico Sailing Club meeting and Christmas party. The meeting covered some important issues, such as voting to accept an offer from a marina company to replace a portion of the docks that were too seriously damaged by being grounded for two years to be used again. Also, the election results were tallied, and, as expected, Pat is the commodore for the coming year.
But something else happened, too, over dinner before the meeting. We were sitting with another couple who are active in both the New Mexico and Rio Grande sailing clubs, along with some other women sailors, discussing the upcoming Adams Cup regionals. New Mexico is allowed two teams, one from each club. The Rio Grande club is well on the way to having a good team with Sue at the helm; however, the New Mexico club is still working on it, and in particular, they’re searching for someone to be helmswoman. They have quite a few people who are willing to trim sheets, or sit on the upwind rail, or work the foredeck, but they don’t have anybody who actually wants to drive the boat … or, at least, they didn’t. The conversation went something like this:
“Would you like to be on the team?”
“I might.”
“Helm?”
“Um, uh … yeah. Sure. Why not?” At this point, I thought I detected a gleam in Sue’s eye.
Uh, oh, learning curve, here I come. It’s probably a matter of overcoming fear more than anything else. I am at least a bit flattered that Sue thought I could potentially have the aggressiveness to take the helm in a race and do reasonably well. Looks like I’ll be spending the spring series races on J/24s rather than the committee boat. And Pat has some credit with an airline for some non-refundable tickets he had to cancel when he was called for jury duty – he’s now talking about using that credit to send me out to J/World. Yikes.
We were at the New Mexico Sailing Club meeting and Christmas party. The meeting covered some important issues, such as voting to accept an offer from a marina company to replace a portion of the docks that were too seriously damaged by being grounded for two years to be used again. Also, the election results were tallied, and, as expected, Pat is the commodore for the coming year.
But something else happened, too, over dinner before the meeting. We were sitting with another couple who are active in both the New Mexico and Rio Grande sailing clubs, along with some other women sailors, discussing the upcoming Adams Cup regionals. New Mexico is allowed two teams, one from each club. The Rio Grande club is well on the way to having a good team with Sue at the helm; however, the New Mexico club is still working on it, and in particular, they’re searching for someone to be helmswoman. They have quite a few people who are willing to trim sheets, or sit on the upwind rail, or work the foredeck, but they don’t have anybody who actually wants to drive the boat … or, at least, they didn’t. The conversation went something like this:
“Would you like to be on the team?”
“I might.”
“Helm?”
“Um, uh … yeah. Sure. Why not?” At this point, I thought I detected a gleam in Sue’s eye.
Uh, oh, learning curve, here I come. It’s probably a matter of overcoming fear more than anything else. I am at least a bit flattered that Sue thought I could potentially have the aggressiveness to take the helm in a race and do reasonably well. Looks like I’ll be spending the spring series races on J/24s rather than the committee boat. And Pat has some credit with an airline for some non-refundable tickets he had to cancel when he was called for jury duty – he’s now talking about using that credit to send me out to J/World. Yikes.
posted by Carol Anne | 1:31 AM
4 Comments:
Congratulations. Sounds like preparing for the event and competing in it will be a great experience. I look forward to reading about it in your blog.
Carol Anne was afraid you might encourage her.
Go get 'em!
Thanks, Tillerman and Andrew. When things get rough, I'll try to remember my cheering sections in New Jersey and Arkansas.
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