Sailing with Dad.

I call my parents about once a week, which I think is good for a guy. My mom has been out of town (Dallas) for about 3 weeks, so I called my dad and talked to him about how great the Rangers were doing and how excited we were for them. Soon the conversation switched to when mom and dad were planning on coming down to Houston, the trip that we have been planning since August. Finally I just suggested that he come tomorrow, and dad couldn't really think of a good reason not to, so he said he would pack his things and come down for a day so that we could go sailing.

The last time I had been sailing, the whole family went to Galveston. We sailed around the bay in a 30 ft yacht for the day, with a captain and everything. I still remember him with a huge beard and a captain's hat, but no parrot, to my dismay. This trip would be a bit different. Once I started looking at the costs of renting such a boat, I soon decided that a 16' luger with no outboard motor would be plenty for Dad and I to mess around with in Clear Lake and/or Galveston Bay.

Sunday morning we drove down to the dock after sleeping in until 9am (super late for me!). Dad got some sandwiches at Subway while I checked out the boat and payed the charter dude for the sailboat rental.

We chatted with the charter dude for a little bit about Dad’s racing days and how it would be good to get back out on the water. We were loading the boat up and about to shove off, but I suppose Dad “shoved off” a little too hard and lost his balance, falling over backward in to the water! He was unhurt except for his pride and soon got out of the water and on to dry land. The funny part was to see the demeanor of the charter guy get a little bit more nervous about letting these land ‘lubers take his boat out!

It was very difficult to get the boat out due to the strong wind that was coming straight from the direction we wanted to go. This meant that we had no way to get the sails up before the wind would take us straight into another boat in the dock. I paddle as hard as I could while Dad messed with the sails that weren’t put up correctly. Because of the wind, I couldn’t paddle hard enough to keep us from hitting parts of the dock and other boats around us, and my anxiety quickly grew. I kept thinking to myself, “Maybe the old man has forgotten how to do this, and we are screwed!”

After about 15 minutes of knocking around and messing with the sails, we got the sails up and started on a port tack. The wind was pretty gusty and Dad was not used to the boat yet. Because of this, he kept laying the boat over just a little too much, and water would rush over the gunwale and onto our feet. My anxiety at this point started to increase exponential, as described by the chart below, which shows # of expletives coming out of my mouth vs liters of water in the boat. I thought we were about to capsize!!

Soon we had the boat under control and I took a turn at the rudder. I was slow at first, being very cautious with how much list I would allow, so we crawled around the bay, even though the wind was pretty strong. Soon I became comfortable enough to let the boat go and we started to have a lot of fun.

During our cruise we also got to see a neat air show, with 5 jets flying around, looping and twirling in what looked to be an impossibly tight formation. AS the sun was setting, I felt like this was a great day with good father/son bonding. It was good to have him down!