No Wind

Sailing is good for life lessons: you can’t head directly anywhere.  Want to sail upwind?  Tough shit — you can’t.  You can tack back and forth and slowly crawl upwind arriving where you want to arrive, but you can’t sail into the wind. You can sail across the wind and into it at a 45 degree angle and with it, but you can’t sail directly into it.

And then there’s the no wind situation.  I was at the helm with Justin and Sarah and we were making our way back to Monroe after an evening sail.  It was getting late and the wind was dying a little.  We’re going with the wind, but a little off it, and I decided we’d be better off after a jibe because we could head directly back to the south entrance.  So we jibed.

I look up at the windex and think, “huh, that’s weird, we need to tack.”  I say we need to tack and we tack and I look at the windex again and now it’s spinning.  So we’re in the middle of a cyclone.

Or, “The wind’s dead,” Justin says.  We start up the motor and head in.