The original plan for Monday was to spend maybe fifteen minutes in the classroom and then the rest of the day on the water in the Flying Juniors. As it so happened, we spent four hours in the classroom because of the weather, and only three hours on the boats. The time spent in the class room in the morning was supposed to be used for working on our projects that are due Thursday. Working on projects lasted about halfway to lunchtime then the cards came out and we started playing Euchre, BS, Hearts, and Egyptian Rat Screw. After lunch, Jim taught us more about the FJs as we continued to wait for the weather to lift and the wind to pick up. A little while later we were all on the water.
Two boats flipped while we were out. Nicole and Milton, and Robert and Kurt. Gray and I came fairly close to flipping a couple of times ourselves. As we went through a jibe, the boat healed so much that the leeward rail of the boat went a few inches under the water. We got the boat flattened out and back on course, but now there was nearly five gallons of water in the bottom of our FJ. As it sloshed around it covered our feet in yellow-green water instantly soaking through our shoes. But that was really all the wetter we got.
All that was yesterday... today Gray and I were in the only boat to flip. We turtled it and got the mast stuck about a foot and a half into the mud at the bottom of the bay (not very fun to flip back over.) Thankfully though, the sun was beating down and the wind was relatively light so we dried off fairly quickly.
To make the day better, however, Gray and I won the two windward/leeward races that we ran as a practice for the regatta that is planned for later in the week. Sadly, we weren’t quite as successful at the two gold cup races we ran. The wind died down on the way back in and toward the end of the second gold cup race so it took us all way longer to get back to the dock than it should. As college students are not known for their patience, at least six of the ten boats had had enough moving along at a pace that felt like you were going backwards, they just started paddling with their hands or bailer. It was a great day!
Tomorrow we are going to be back on the keelboats and are going on another daysail. But instead of rafting together to eat box lunches, we will eat at a dockside restaurant, the name of which I haven’t been given or at least don’t remember. But one thing is for sure; They will have great seafood.
Andrew Fisher
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Floridian Verse
By Robert Van Zanen
Untitled Florida 7
Sand and shallows
waves and wind
sun so bright it burns my skin
Running wild
Cutting fins
Somehow changed by our first sins
Signs of life and death
They mingle
With sunscreen commercial jingles
Find the beauty once again
Sing of glory
Son, not sin.
Untitled Florida 13
FJ's scooting across the water
Reminding all of God's great power
See the gust that makes one flounder
Causes us all to stop in wonder
Watch the waves to find the wind
See the people seeing Him
God, so present here in nature
Lord, show us your wonderful future
Tacking up toward the source
Other turn and abandon course
Learning how to hold the jib
Finding a Godly way to live
We find joy as we search for You
Dolphins accompany us through the blue
Seeking to better run the race
Basking in your warm embrace
Untitled Florida 7
Sand and shallows
waves and wind
sun so bright it burns my skin
Running wild
Cutting fins
Somehow changed by our first sins
Signs of life and death
They mingle
With sunscreen commercial jingles
Find the beauty once again
Sing of glory
Son, not sin.
Untitled Florida 13
FJ's scooting across the water
Reminding all of God's great power
See the gust that makes one flounder
Causes us all to stop in wonder
Watch the waves to find the wind
See the people seeing Him
God, so present here in nature
Lord, show us your wonderful future
Tacking up toward the source
Other turn and abandon course
Learning how to hold the jib
Finding a Godly way to live
We find joy as we search for You
Dolphins accompany us through the blue
Seeking to better run the race
Basking in your warm embrace
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
The Day Trip
Yesterday, January 11, we took a day trip. We sailed from approximately10 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon. It was a fun day. We went farther than we ever had and even did something Jim had never done before; sailed under the Sunshine Skyway bridge.
Osprey feeding
Sunshine Skyway Bridge and the Wizard
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The Class
Ryan Zwart
Robert Van Zanen
Nicole Ludema
Milton Herrold
Kurt Van Sickle
Jake Vriesema
Hans Granner
Gray Moser
Gillian Vander Tuig
Erin Campbell
Dave VandeBunte
Dani Vander Ark
Chris Sammons
Calvin Wiersma
Calvin Bulthuis
Ben Hazekamp
Bekah Williamson
Andrew Fisher
Alex Tiemens
Abbie Hoekstra
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Charting and a Day to Relax
First off, I thought that in the last post I had mentioned that this is now the 2011 interim, the fourth biennial Harness the Wind trip. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear initially.
On Friday in the classroom we talked a little more about the weather and introduction to chart reading. I have always been fascinated by cartography. Almost every time there is a map around, especially a weathered one (not to be confused with a weather map, though they do intrigue me too) I get bored because they require more instruction to understand than a regular chart or map. I read a book once on map theft called "The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime". It was on the history of maps and the collectors market surrounding maps all set around the premiss of a nameless map thief. Sadly, though, the name of the author escapes me. I highly recommend it, and it is between 200-250 pages, so a fairly quick read. But I digress, I don’t know what it is about maps that I find so fascinating. It might have something to do with the fair amount of critical and quick thinking that has to be done when you are trying to find a specific point. I was on a week long canoe trip once, and about the fifth day the leader of the trip realized that we wouldn’t be able to make our extraction point on time if we held to the route we had been following all week long. So a friend of mine and I sat down, pulled out the maps, and plotted out a couple of ways that we could get to where we needed in the remaining two days based on the pace we had been traveling. Learning how to read depth and navigational markers was great.
Yesterday, since it was the weekend, there was no sailing, but instead we headed out to Myakka State Park. We rented canoes for two hours, and some of us paddled around the lake, while others paddled up the river. All of us, however, saw lots of the Florida wildlife. One canoe counted seeing as many as eleven alligators. There was also seen a flock of spoonbills, which apparently is a rather uncommon occurrence. After we returned the canoes and ate lunch we went up the road a few miles to Siesta Key Beach. The sand on the beach was white and powdery. Because of how white it is, the sand remains cool even though the sun beats down on it. It was also packed very tightly, be it in part because of the number of people that travel over it, or the material it was made out of or some combination of the both, I don’t claim to know. But I do know that the density of the sand created a very cool effect. I was laying on a towel with my ear to the sand, and for no reason in particular I started tapping on the towel. In normal sand when you do this you can hear a dull thudding. On this sand, however, instead of a thudding, it sounds more like a someone rapping their knuckles on a hardwood door with a slight metallic twang. The sound could be heard by some of the people in the group who were ten feet away. I thought it was great.
On Friday in the classroom we talked a little more about the weather and introduction to chart reading. I have always been fascinated by cartography. Almost every time there is a map around, especially a weathered one (not to be confused with a weather map, though they do intrigue me too) I get bored because they require more instruction to understand than a regular chart or map. I read a book once on map theft called "The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime". It was on the history of maps and the collectors market surrounding maps all set around the premiss of a nameless map thief. Sadly, though, the name of the author escapes me. I highly recommend it, and it is between 200-250 pages, so a fairly quick read. But I digress, I don’t know what it is about maps that I find so fascinating. It might have something to do with the fair amount of critical and quick thinking that has to be done when you are trying to find a specific point. I was on a week long canoe trip once, and about the fifth day the leader of the trip realized that we wouldn’t be able to make our extraction point on time if we held to the route we had been following all week long. So a friend of mine and I sat down, pulled out the maps, and plotted out a couple of ways that we could get to where we needed in the remaining two days based on the pace we had been traveling. Learning how to read depth and navigational markers was great.
Yesterday, since it was the weekend, there was no sailing, but instead we headed out to Myakka State Park. We rented canoes for two hours, and some of us paddled around the lake, while others paddled up the river. All of us, however, saw lots of the Florida wildlife. One canoe counted seeing as many as eleven alligators. There was also seen a flock of spoonbills, which apparently is a rather uncommon occurrence. After we returned the canoes and ate lunch we went up the road a few miles to Siesta Key Beach. The sand on the beach was white and powdery. Because of how white it is, the sand remains cool even though the sun beats down on it. It was also packed very tightly, be it in part because of the number of people that travel over it, or the material it was made out of or some combination of the both, I don’t claim to know. But I do know that the density of the sand created a very cool effect. I was laying on a towel with my ear to the sand, and for no reason in particular I started tapping on the towel. In normal sand when you do this you can hear a dull thudding. On this sand, however, instead of a thudding, it sounds more like a someone rapping their knuckles on a hardwood door with a slight metallic twang. The sound could be heard by some of the people in the group who were ten feet away. I thought it was great.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
The Start of a New Year
Three days ago I started working on a post to publish up here; I threw around about a dozen ideas on how I was going to format it and finally settled on one. It was going to be pretty good too, but alas, that was three days ago and the content that I had written is no longer up to date. So the purpose of this post is really just to get some new content up, and to hopefully get the ball rolling on more consistent postings. As well as to get everyone caught up on what it is we have done the past few days. So, please, bear with me.
We arrived in Tampa on Monday around 10:30am, drove to the hotel, and lollygagged around all evening. On Tuesday, we fell into our normal routine of leaving the hotel at 8am and driving no more than two miles to Eckerd College to be taught a hobby we will, hopefully, enjoy for the rest of our lives. I know, at least for me, "learn to sail" is being scratched off my bucket list and is being replaced with "perfect your sailing ability." Because in three days I have learned the basics, but it will take a lifetime to master this incredible sport.
In short, over the past three days we have learned how to tie 6 knots, put up and pull down sails, tack, jibe, the points of sail, and the figure-eight rescue technique. Not to mention countless terms and functions for the parts that make up a keel boat. Needless to say, it has been a busy, thrilling, tiring, wonderful three days, and I expect nothing less out of the next 19.
Andrew Fisher
We arrived in Tampa on Monday around 10:30am, drove to the hotel, and lollygagged around all evening. On Tuesday, we fell into our normal routine of leaving the hotel at 8am and driving no more than two miles to Eckerd College to be taught a hobby we will, hopefully, enjoy for the rest of our lives. I know, at least for me, "learn to sail" is being scratched off my bucket list and is being replaced with "perfect your sailing ability." Because in three days I have learned the basics, but it will take a lifetime to master this incredible sport.
In short, over the past three days we have learned how to tie 6 knots, put up and pull down sails, tack, jibe, the points of sail, and the figure-eight rescue technique. Not to mention countless terms and functions for the parts that make up a keel boat. Needless to say, it has been a busy, thrilling, tiring, wonderful three days, and I expect nothing less out of the next 19.
Andrew Fisher
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