105: SAILING LESSONS BEGIN: It can’t be THAT hard? Days 1-5|Castries & Pitons Navigation Trips

Cheers. Wow what a day. What a crazy day. Today was our first full day of sailing lessons. Captain Ben arrived at 9 30. That's the captain. If I knew I'd have recommended somebody. And we spent a couple of hours going through the boat, looking it over, talking about safety equipment that we need to have on the boat. We reviewed just protocols and things like that for all safety measures. And then we untied and we started doing maneuvers in tight spaces. So figure eights, 360s, reversing. We were learning how to use reverse under control. We're doing circles in the marina and it's Aileen's turn. Captain Ben is the best isn't he? Okay now she's going to have to do a figure eight in between this boat and some of the buoys. And then we went out into the open ocean. We only put up the main sail. The main. So that was, you know, he wanted us to get a feel for that tomorrow and have it be a little less complicated. Tomorrow we're gonna have the jib. You really need that jib to point it crazy. We're getting a really good introduction. Just like any big day, you know, you have to give yourself a little grace and you have to sleep on it. Looking forward to tomorrow. How many days we have of this? 14. I want to be on the record this morning for saying that my wife is totally amazing for more reasons than I can even count. Or my vocal cords are permitted to emit. Yeah. Yes, she says. She agrees. Of course she agrees. Yeah. Diesels are generally very reliable. This is actually really well labeled. That's fantastic. Today we spent a few hours working on docking which was great. Let's figure out which line's which. So again, you would forget about that. Clean this up first then get rid of this line. Even if you have tied it to the inside, make sure you pass it back. Okay. Pass through. And out. I usually have them coiled up so when I step off the boat everything's going to come off neatly. Now our reward is we get to go out do a little sailing. Brown's at the helm and I'm really proud of us. We have gained a lot of confidence just in the second day so that's awesome. With a successful launch off the dock first thing this morning then we successfully got on a hammerhead dock so we're doing really well. Excited that we're making progress. Settings to get out trips for the day, trips for the week, for the month. What you've also got to do is be easing these slightly but you can't just let these open and the reason I've come down here to get the jib out and turn is so we've got the whole length of the bay to screw it up with before we run out of water if that makes sense. So we're in a port tack so that means the sail's going to be set on the snobbish side because when you're coming off the wind like this the sails need to be out at a greater angle. Today we learn about navigation with Captain Dan. I'm a real chart holder this time. Oh yeah look at all this official stuff. It's in between no wind and I haven't got there three days. That wasn't an issue. That's 20, that's two, four, I'm gonna say roughly into there so that's that's 40 and then I can come back here lie down on there that's 40, 50, 53 miles. Very important when we're working on paper charts that everything you do is straight line. Obviously this is north-south, this is east-west, everything has to be straight so we want a lap long here. I'm going to use a straight edge on the back here that's not a navigation it's just the boundary that helps you level up. Here's where we're going today, Castries. 219 degrees is the direction we need to travel. Very important to know if you're dealing in magnetic or you're dealing in true. Now the next thing we want to know we want to know how far it is. We are on our way to Castries. We just plotted the trip. Lots of new learning, not only navigation but pilotage. Standing by 1-4. This is the first bit of the runway. We came in here to just have a point of sail, where to go and we just did a little maneuvering around some boats in a tight marina and we had to ask for permission from the airport to come in because our mast is in the way of the airplanes as they land. We're on day three of instruction with Captain Ben so he's letting us take the boat a little bit more than we were the first two days on our own. He's instructing less. Yeah he's still paying him. Yeah good gracious. What's he doing? So we're taking the boat more than we have the other two days and that's the whole point of this is for him to do less and for us to do more. This is the airport right here. That's the start of the runway and that island right there is the place where the planes really start to land. So you can see with a mast as tall as ours we would definitely screw things up for a plane that was landing. That's the spot on the dock. I say it's here where this triangle is at 12 30 and I now need to work out where I am. I know I've been traveling at my course over ground was 3-4-5 like 3-4-5. I just keep it like that when I'm doing again big trips if stuff's happening and I need to keep notes on the trip. Tracks you can they're quite handy with you at the end of the day you can see where you've been you can follow in and out again. All right sweetie what are you doing right now? That back window to your office. I am plotting our course to determine if we manually can match what the GPS is saying as to our current position. Our current position is not moving very fast. And do you like this? Oh I love this. So tell us why. Totally geeking out. Oh it's all math. It's so fun. Oh my gosh. When I was in calculus class and I would do a problem and then I'd go to the back of the book to find out if I got the right answer and when you have the right answer it's like the greatest feeling in the world. It's so cool. Now I just need to learn how to use the sextant so that I can add more math to my life. I'm taking GPS points every hour and then marking the chart. Team 30 there's our location so we came from here so that is the distance that we have gone so far. I'm so jazzed by this process. Every day can be math day on the water. Math day on the water makes me a happy girl. We got a little extra time during the day. I'm making a salad dressing. I geek out on mathematics. He geeks out on cooking. We're making a vinaigrette with lime as the acid base. Then we have local honey to sweeten things up for my sweetie. We're gonna add some lemon pepper, garlic, and oh my gosh we've got the best. We have this Italian Kirkland olive oil. This is a kitchen with a view isn't it? The Pitons are majestic volcanic spires located on the southwestern coast of Saint Lucia. They are a world heritage site and one of the main attractions for visitors to the island. The Pitons are featured in many Saint Lucian things like their flag and their beer. Gros Piton, the southernmost Piton, is 2,600 feet high and much easier to climb than his sister Petite Piton which is 2,400 feet high. The peaks are located near the town of Soufrière. Are you excited? Where are we sweetie? At the Pitons. Let's take a look. Eileen at the helm. Wow look at that. Look at that. Okay this is absolutely crazy. Sugar Beach is normally packed with boats. There is not one boat out here right now. Here comes our mooring ball help. Thanks guys, really appreciate it. So this is the first night that we anchor with our boat. Well we're not anchoring, we're mooring. We're mooring but so we're not at the marina and just look at how incredible it is. Just this whole bay. It's like it's just like a big hug just with these beautiful mountains and then the water right here although we're close to the shore is about 1,200 feet deep and it's super blue and it's extremely clear which you'll see we'll put the camera underneath the water. So you ready to get in? Yeah. Hey lovely what do you smell? Lovely sulfur. Rotten eggs and what's that from? There's a big old volcano right behind us. We are at the end of day four and we're feeling a whole lot better than we were at the end of day three right? We are. We were gonna do a day three recap but day three was so tough we chose not to do a recap because it was a bad day. It was discouraging. Well it's not the whole day. Well and you know since we've gotten over it but it's like you know first time things happen it always hurts the most so. Well I mean it was overwhelming first and foremost the whole day learning about navigation. Yeah at the end of the day we came into our dock which is a really tough way to come in because it's the wind's blowing you into it. Solid concrete. Solid concrete It was just a comedy of Eric. So we came in and it was just ouch a little too hard and the bow of the boat slammed up against the dock and just a little bit of scraping on the gel coat. Our boat's fine but it was just a crazy thing that happened and it's like the first scratch. It's like the first thing that happens to your young child. It's okay but you overreact. It's emotional. Same thing here. So today's been a much better day. Our homework last night was to plan the navigation here to Soufriere and to the Pitot so we did that and did a great job. It was right. Then we took off on our route and followed our route all the way here to the Pitot. So pretty much from the all the way to the north to almost the south of the island. These islands are very tall and it takes all day to get from one end to the other due to covid. The beaches are empty and so are the mooring. Come with me. Oh yeah so here's the bathroom. The coolest thing is the view outside the window. Check this out. Can you believe it? Just can't even tell you how happy we are and we're so glad to have you guys watching along with us experiencing this with us. At the end of day five we didn't actually do a review because we came back from Soufriere, the Pitons, and we had a wonderful wonderful time there although we just... That was fantastic. It was amazing. In the morning before we left to come back to Rodney Bay we took a dinghy trip into the town of Soufriere and walked around. We have not been back to Soufriere in a few years, almost three years now, so it was fun to be back there but really sad too because the the tourist industry is completely unraveled because there aren't any tourists here so it's sad to see the destruction the just devastation well poverty and and also uh it's very edgy you just never know when something's going to break down but we had a uh a nice walk around we bought some things from the market you take you take my photo man you pay for that oh gosh you're you ought to charge you ought to charge a modeling fee you're so good looking how about that guy on the motorcycle that was doing the wheelies oh yeah and i got to see a crested hummingbird i was so excited first one ever they're really cute yeah they're really cute i was just so so ridiculously excited you got to see what a crested hummingbird these tell you um even though it's a port marker boy it's telling you to take the starboard channel okay so you might have a choice of several channels also with shapes so if something like a triangle falls off these the idea is the coloring still so so basically that can be pretty much any vessel from behind oh bye-bye p times on the way back i learned some really cool stuff using the compass the the ideal is we call it the crooked hat where you draw a line here here and here and then the free lines will meet somewhere in the middle and never perfectly we learned three-point reckoning we use three points that we can see on land and then we use the compass to determine our location versus what the gps says it was awesome you are a rock star when it comes to that you bring the math together that's the last thing that i want to do is sit there and calculate all this stuff just makes my head want to explode oh that's good we have different skill sets we have different skill sets i've been practicing bringing the boat each time the admiral has designated me to do that yep and i'm on lines and dock duty so i'm loving that great communication we'll make it takes teamwork doesn't it really does take teamwork and communication so i'm telling you bringing this 44 in and a dock that's totally unforgiving concrete metal and bring it in with the wind blowing is it's not easy i'll tell you it is the most intimidating thing that i've ever done but you did you're doing great oh i nailed it twice it's just it's awesome nailed it as in like hit it no nailed it with not hitting it almost hit the other well give me time sweetie i'll do it give me time anyway so that's uh that's the news for today that's our recap we really appreciate you watching this it means so much to us and we just ask if you haven't already please subscribe a lot of you have been sharing our videos yeah thank you and our views have gone on thanks for your encouragement for absolutely we appreciate that give us a thumbs up and uh please comment we want to hear from you all thanks for watching