Sailing

From early childhood, summer involved water-related outdoor activities. Swimming in a lake or sea, canoeing / kayaking, long time ago fishing are the ones I associated with summer. But still, there are many water sports I have not tried so far. Until last Saturday, sailing was on that list.

The first encounter on sailing was not entirely off my own bat. Konrad, a member of my circle of friends met in Szlachetna Paczka, has been a veteran sailor. He took it up over a decade ago, got hooked to the extent he honed his skills in sailing academia and now holds a sailor licence which allows him to navigate on an open sea several kilometres from the shore. On the first Saturday of July he took a few people from our circle for a cruise across Zalew Zegrzyński.

Sailing is in some way akin to driving a vehicle. You may decide not to sit behind the wheel and rely on a driver, which might be the case in sailing too. But if you are to steer a boat, you ought to learn some theory in advance and then practise for hundreds hours in different weather conditions to sail safely.

The biggest hindrance for me in acquiring basic sailing skills was… the vocabulary. Words or phrases unknown to me precisely describe boat elements or steering activities, but without a glossary even responding to commands of an experienced sailor is a challenge. So by the next time I undertake sailing, I will brush up on the specialised language.

After the heat wave became a history, the weather swung towards cold and windy face of summer. Few boats were on waters the last weekend, with wind reaching over 50 kmph in gusts and wind chill close to +10C in the middle of the lake. The conditions have given us a hard first time and there were moments of fear, even thought our ship was quite stable. Konrad has proven to be a seasoned sailor, knowing how to navigate the boat in nasty weather circumstances. Watching him, I recalled the old adage a smooth sea has never made a skilful sailor.

After the first try, I neither dislike it nor have grown fond of it. In some time, probably still this year, we will likely set off to repeat the experience and I will indulge in it occasionally, treating it as one of many socialising rituals, but not as a new hobby. Definitely I would prefer not confine to being a passenger and would aim to grasp basics of sailing, which definitely will do good to my brain. Stimulating the grey matter by trying new things should preserve the brain “in working order” for a long time.