It was Saturday the 17 of November, the day Andrew was coming to visit. I had set myself a goal for the end of the week. To teach Andrew how to sail our sailing dinghy, Plastiki, all by himself . I had already set up the rig. It had a huge 2 piece mast that was around 16 feet long where as Plastiki was only 11ft.

Andrew and I where ready to set out. It was Sunday, the day after they arrived. So you could imagine that Andrew was excited to get sailing with a good wind of 10 knots (around 11 MPH). I started teaching Andrew how to handle the mainsheet first, (The line that lets the sail in our out) teaching him about the sail luffing and how to make sure it was trimmed just right. He was doing pretty well, and then I handed him the tiller. He was doing well for his first time steering; we had already gone through the simple bit of how to steer, turn the tiller in the opposite direction you want to go. What tacking was and what jibing was. Unfortunately I failed to tell him what to do when a 30-foot ferry heads towards us at top speed, besides scream and panic of course. Fortunately Andrew had gained some nautical knowledge from my simple lesson and turned away from the ferries path and headed downwind. Unfortunately, he did a wide turn to get even farther away from the ferry. Now, you may be thinking, “What’s so bad about putting more distance away from danger” well, we where already downwind so this put us in the position of a jibe. I noticed this and told Andrew to duck as we accidentally jibed. I had already told him what would happen if he didn’t duck so he listened without question. Of course it was just my luck to not duck all the way so the boom swung around and hit the top of my head with you guessed it, a dull “Boom”. This was when I decided it was time to head back in, and after all it was getting close to lunchtime.

We were unable to try sailing for a few days due to weather, rain, wind, storms, etc., etc., etc. However we finally got to do more sailing a few days before Andrew had to leave. There was a little too much wind so we decided to put some reefs in the sail (reefing is when we decrease the size of the sail, therefore less power so we didn’t tip over). We practiced sailing around the harbour for a while. Then after he had been handling the mainsheet for a while I decided to give him the tiller once again. Meanwhile, I held onto the tiller also to make sure that he didn’t zoom out of control. It worked very well and we had a great time sailing around, we zoomed around the harbor some more going at around 6-7 knots (about 8-9 mph).

After taking a one-day break of sailing, going to the beach instead. We headed back to the water and decided to slowly progress from handling the mainsheet to then him handling the tiller with me still holding on to it. But eventually I thought it was okay to let go of the tiller and let him handle it. We were going fine for a while, but after he did some masterful handling of the boat we had to tack. He did everything correctly except for remembering to stop turning. So I was about to congratulate him when the boom swung around and we listed to one side meanwhile I was yelling, “Jibe!” “Death roll!” “Jibe!!!”. Death rolling is about as fun as it sounds. It is when you are still leaning out on a tack to keep the boat from tipping over, then suddenly head downwind where it levels it self out. You would tip yourself over with your own weight. Usually this also means that the boom would swing around and hit you on the head. Anyways, we managed to get the tiller under control and have more fun sailing around. In the end Andrew managed to sail us all the way around the harbor with him handling the tiller AND the mainsheet. Without getting us run over by any boat or in any other Death Roll situations. I hope Andrew had as much fun as I did teaching him how to sail because I believe that he did very well at learning how to sail solo in only one week!

Roan.