Celebrating my first blog post

Little did I realize setting up a blog would take so much out of me.  My first post had some odd duplication of pics and content at the bottom.  It will stay as I cannot find a way to delete them.  Facebook was a mystery to me for some years.  Now I find it easy.  I hope blogging as will become just as easy.

In July 2016 we took American Sailing Association classes 101 and 103  from Genevieve Evans on Flathead Lake out of Dayton, MT.  We just happened to see her teaching a student the first season she started teaching there.  She was confident and strong enough to tell Mark to shut up and listen.  He really respected her for her knowledge and emphasis on safety .She has over 10,000 hours of accrued sailing in the waters of Belize, Bahamas, US and British Virgin Islands, Montana, California, and Florida.  She is  a USCG Captain and certified American Sailing Association Instructor . We were in good hands.

Captain Genevieve's dog. .

This was our spinnaker.

It is higher off the bow than the jib.

Captain G at the helm.

A spinnaker is very light weight but very powerful.  We were sailing downwind. The spinnaker makes this more exciting.

It was amazing to me.  Usually sailing downwind it is very boring and you don't feel like you are moving very fast.  The spinnaker took care of that.  We were flying.

It was just massive.  you can see how high it was raised.

Shortly after this photo the wind really picked up.  We were passing between 2 islands.  Captain G ran forward and release on line.  Mark was trying to release the other.  I was oblivious to the danger we had found ourselves.  All I remember is that when both lines were finally released, the spinnaker took off on it's own across the water.  I had worked hard on not panicking when the boat heeled.  This time the boat was heeling toward to bow and I did not notice.  Captain G said she was afraid that it would pull us into the lake bow first.  Mark had seen this also.  No harm done,. We just turned the engine on and motored to the sail and pulled it from the water.  It had one small tear the spreader had done; easily repaired with glue.  It is material like parachutes.  

Since our B&B was full in July, we had to stretch out the spinnaker in our apartment to dry.

Cloud at the end of that day.  I was suppose to be learning out reading clouds.  I do not know it this was a message of the weather we experienced earlier in the day.  However it was neat.

We managed to get our motorcycle buddies to venture out with us.  They had owned a sailboat in Madison, WI and were over the sailing bit.  They had stayed with motorcycles.  Mark was selling all of his and moving on the sailing.

We had been on some Princess cruises with them and Scott particularly likes being on the water.  He is a navy man from the Vietnam era.

Sailing wing on wing (mainsail on one side and jib on the other) going down wind. Sorry have not managed to rotate

pics yet.

This boat had manual wenches and the sail needed to hauled in and tied up.

We saw a plan land and take off from the water twice in one day.

We first thought it was water plan for the fires in Montana.

Someone told us it was a plan owned by some rich New York stock broker that owned one of the islands on Flathead Lake.  They had regular training whether he was home or not.

Wind vane was very important to watch on this boat as we did not have radar and electronic guides.  We had electric an manual compasses and an auto-pilot.