Used Romany, For Sale Cheap

$1200 OBO. Brand new decklines. Will trade for Laser. Gone to the dark side.

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NOT!!!!!!

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaa!

The Romany is not for sale at any price, I'll be needing that boat for many more adventures, starting with teaching at the lake next weekend.

I was not exactly a howling success as a dinghy sailor. There were 2 lasers added to the boats available to play with on Sunday, but I didn't lay a hand on one of those. Trying to get a Sunfish around a figure 8 course provided more than enough frustration. Either I was in irons, or over. I understood the theory, but failed entirely to put it into practice. Mostly just 'cause the business of dealing with tacks or gybes with a tiller extension and a mainsheet without a cleat was a source of incredible confusion. There's a sailing catchphrase, about how your head should always be outside the boat - well, I'd start my tack, and the minute I even started thinking about what I was going to do, my head would instantly be focused entirely on tiller extension & sheet, in that moment of inattention I'd let the boat head up, but slowly, not with alacrity, I'd feel the boat start to turn & push the tiller to lee when instead I probably should have let it pick up speed again, go into the tack too slow, and then of course I'd be sailing with the tiller behind my back & trying to work out how to get the sheet hand and the tiller hand swapped, and couldn't seem to pull that off while keeping both the rudder and the sheet under control - I'd lose one or the other, and whichever it was, that would be the coup de grace of any vestigial forward motion & there I'd be, flappety flappety flap.

Thhbbbt.

The other variety of error involved swimming.

I did get plenty of practice at:

Righting a dinghy
Getting out of irons

and eventually -

Cursing in proper sailorly fashion.

When the cursing sessions were getting longer than the getting-out-of-irons sessions, I decided it was time for a looooooong lunch break.

It's not that I couldn't sail the boat at - I loved sailing out & sailing back. I practiced a few tacks at the end & they were getting better.

I think the IDEAL next step would involve a Sunfish, a breeze of 5 to 8 knots, a quiet beach with lots of room and just coming about & coming about &coming about & coming about, repeat ad nauseum or until I could do it without thinking about it, whichever came first.

Then maybe I could think about actually doing one around a buoy.

Hm...and as long as we're pipe-dreaming, perhaps the buoy could be in the Caribbean. Mm. Yes, that would be pleasant.

For the time being though, my kayaks are not for sale.