Take Me Sailing

In college, I joined the sailing club to meet boys, but I never did learn to sail. All I took away from it was a t-shirt.

My husband, D, has a Hobie cat 16 idly sitting on the side of our house waiting for the perfect day to take out. This past Saturday was the day. D hasn’t used it since he met me, which would be about 2 years now. When I went with him to pull it out of the backyard, it didn’t look good. The trampoline looked dry rotted, but he said it was fine and would hold up. There were a few large holes in it already. He mentioned that perhaps he would sell it after the day, but really wanted to take it out.

The wind blew wildly--it was the perfect day at the park to fly kites and sail. I hesitated in joining him as I didn’t want to flip in the lake. He promised me that wouldn’t happen and really wanted me to accompany him. Our neighbor, a friend of my husbands, offered to come when I said I wasn’t interested in going at first. I decided to finally suck it up and just try it out.

It took awhile to get it out and down to the lake and about 15 minutes to assemble it and put up the sails. As we were getting it together a man and his wife pulled off the side of the rode and asked us some questions about the boat and mentioned they would like to buy one if we were interested in selling. We told him that actually, we were interested in selling it. We exchanged phone numbers and went on our way.

The three of us, got on the hobie cat and picked up some wind speeding down the lake. We were sailing about 30 miles per hour. The trampoline started breaking in several places and we moved around so our butts wouldn’t fall through. It was pretty fun. A few minutes into the ride it got hairy and we started to tip. My husband and I fell off, but his friend managed to hang on to the front and re-balance it so we could get back on. I purposely wore a life vest as I figured. I heard stories about my husband’s sail boating days from his friends and I came prepared. I tried lifting myself back onto the catamaran, but couldn’t. Darn weak upper arms. My husband grabbed me by my shorts and hoisted me up wedging my bathing suit simultaneously up the whole crack of my body. I was hoping nearby boaters didn’t get a crotch shot. I performed minor surgery to get my bathing suit out of my crack!

We caught some more wind and sailed some more, and then, as we were turning to head back, it flipped again--this time spilling all of us into the lake. We couldn’t right side it. We struggled for a while trying to flip it back, but it wouldn’t budge. Water had filled up in one of the hulls. We had a leak.

Two nice boaters came by and trolled around us. Being a typical man, my husband didn’t think we needed help, but I waved one of the boaters to come closer. He waited to see if we made progress and then jumped in the lake to help. It took about 15 minutes to flip it back and the few boaters around us clapped. I asked my husband if he would mind me getting a ride back in a real boat. I met him safely back on shore. Thank goodness fellow boaters are so nice. Usually, when we are on the lake, we are the ones rescuing everyone.

So...if anyone is in the market for some hobie cat parts, we're definitely interested in selling.