I didn’t go for a bike ride Monday night because…

I went for a sail. After work I drove straight to Nockamixon. The wind was out of the NWN at 15, gusting to 20 on the lake. My friend Mike was going to meet me at the lake and sail his boat along side mine, but he forgot his tiller so we sailed together. We left the marina, raised the sails and headed on a close reach until the wind began to slow around 6:30. We jibed and headed the opposite direction back toward the main body of the lake while the wind diminished to 4-6 mph by 7:15. The two options were to crawl back to the marina under current sail, fire up the engine, or drop the jib and fly the genoa. The genoa is a big, lightweight, red and white sail that looks like a parachute. It catches what little wind there is and pulls the boat along. The advantage: you can sail when you’d otherwise drift aimlessly. The disadvantage, when the wind picks up the sail becomes unmanageable and unmanageable quickly becomes dangerous. The light sail is prone to tearing at best, knocking the boat over at worst. Tacking gets tricky since the sail is so large it has to be physically moved around the mast by a crew member. If you don’t guide it across the middle of the boat, it will get snagged around the mast or deck cleats and then problems ensue. When one thing goes wrong on a sailboat the situation quickly deteriorates. Yet, sailing when other boats sit still is something, so we decided upon the genoa. The sun set, the moon rose, the wind picked back up and we sailed in the dark under the genoa.