Swimming...in the Charles

Two weeks ago, I started taking the Learn-to-Sail classes offered at the sailing pavilion. The first class we sat in a classroom and learn about sailing. The second class, we actually get to go out in the water for most of the class. Friday was such a beautiful day that it'd be pity to stay inside. Since I got my sailing card earlier that day, I thought I'd go sailing and practice what we had learned so far. So I'd called up my friend W and asked him to go sailing with me. He had sailed before so I could pester him with a bunch of questions :-)

We got to the sailing pavilion, got a boat and proceed to rig it. But... I didn't know the knots and he had forgotten so we had to go ask for help with that. In the process I learned the knot which ties the boat to the dock. We were ready to push off when we realized a problem. Somehow the rope for the sail had ended up between the rudder and the boat. We spent some time trying to fix that before we were finally ready to go.

The first few minutes were okay. The wind was a little bit stronger than expected though. At one point we almost went into a group of people practicing something, but we were able to avoid them. After a few minutes, W and I decided that given the wind, it might be best if we go back. 10 seconds later, we capsized. When the boat was still on its side, I tried to climb on it and couldn't. So I tried to tell W to do that but I don't think he understood me. And so the boat flipped over with me under it.

As I was trying to get out from under the boat, I couldn't. There was a rope in my way. By the time I came out from under the boat, people had arrived to help us out of the water and to flip the boat over. They were there really fast! We got back in our boat and heeded the direction of the guys who rescued us to bale all the water out of the boat, to head in the direction of the dock on Boston's side and then turn around. Except... we got really close to the dock before we realized that we could've turned around a lot sooner. Because we were so close to the dock, there were quite an audience watching us trying to turn around, baling water out of the boat and trying not to capsize again.

A long while later, we were finally able to change into dry clothing.