Inspired by a similar post on KevinRose.com, I’m setting out my goals and resolutions for 2011 here. So next year I can come back to this post to see what I’ve actually accomplished.
Last week I took Dani for a date night down to Navy Pier to see the tall ships festival. Being from Boston, she had see tall ships several times in her life before, but this was a first for me. It was a really neat experience.
They had 10-12 boats docked at various places around the pier, many of which you could board and tour. Since it was a tourist attraction there were a lot of people running about which sometimes made it difficult to really get to explore them like I would have liked to. But all in all it was a lot of fun. I think having just recently learned the fundamentals of sailing helped me really appreciate the boats all the more. I’ve added a few pics to a gallery on my blog here. The rest are viewable on my flickr stream.
Tonight I went to my first club sailing outing at Chicago Sailing. They actually have these two or three times a week, but Tuesday nights they have a cook out. I had already spoken with the instructor from my beginners class, Rick, and arranged to meet and sail with him. When I got there we met up with another of his students from a previous class.
One of the 24 foot J boats was available so the three of us took it out for the evening. It was a bit of a rough go at first. When I originally rigged the main sail, I hadn’t realized that the previous people that had used the boat had somehow wrapped the sail around the boom. So we had to bring the sail back down and work all those issues out. But once we got the sail up correctly, we were on our way.
Our course pretty much took us out to the Wilson Avenue water crib and back. The lake was pretty much as flat as it gets, and there wasn’t a whole lot of wind. But we managed to find enough to get us out and back without using the motor. A couple of times we sat for a bit, but overall it was a very nice relaxing cruise on a gorgeous evening. And to wrap it all up, we were greeted with hamburgers and brats back at the dock. All in all, a pretty fantastic evening. Looking forward to doing it again next week.
Tori Holmes-Kirk 