We sailed for the first time on Friday, April 28th, at Fern Ridge Lake. The weather was beautiful and the winds were constant, which meant we were pretty much leaning over most of the afternoon. The wind was so cold I stayed in the cabin, reading and watching to see what might go crashing to the floor. We had bought a roll of the rubbery non-slip stuff and it worked great! I think only one tote took a dive. The winds were really gusty on Saturday and we had to take our sails down or get totally dumped over. We were at the other end of the lake so we decided to anchor down and wait out the wind (yeah right). That lasted about 10 minutes when we saw these two little sailing boats from the Yacht club. They use these little boats to teach people how to sail and I think there's a college team that races them. Anyway, they both capsized while we were watching. We decided we better go help since every time they got the boat and sails up they would get slapped back down into the water. When we tried to bring up the anchor it wouldn't budge due to the wind blowing the boat so hard it was dug in tight. I was trying to inch the boat forward to loosen the line while Craig tried to pull it up. That took us at least 5 minutes, all the while these little boats were struggling. When we finally got the anchor up one of the little boats was off and sailing for the other end of the lake. Craig got in the Captains seat and gave it the gas. The first wave he hit threw a wall of water on him which looked actually hilarious! I was laughing and holding on as we slowly made our way to the capsized boat. It turned out this grey haired guy was struggling just to hold on. He was tired and probably getting hypothermia. The keel to the boat kept going in and out and even when he got the boat right side up, he didn't have the energy to climb in. He said if we could just get him in our boat and take him to the docks he would come back to get the boat. Because the winds were so gusty and the waves so high (due to the shallowness of the lake, about 10 - 15 feet deep) we had to back up to him while I held out our extension pole for him to grab on. Once he got hold Craig shut off the motor and put down the swim ladder for the first time. We pulled this poor soaked man to the boat and he climbed in by the motor on our little ladder. The poor guy was in jeans and a sweatshirt and thankfully a life jacket. He said the other boat was full of three 15-year-olds, his son and two friends. We headed to the other end of the lake where the kids were and the yacht club where they all came from. (This is right next to Richardson Park where we keep our boat so that worked for us too). We caught up with the kids and threw them one of our 25' ropes, told them to drop their sail and tie the rope to the bottom of their mast. Those poor kids were freezing and the one was a girl in shorts and a tank top so she was hunkered down in the front of the boat, trying to stay out of the wind. You can see the boys in the picture but not the girl since she was way down in there. So we dragged them all to the docks and said our good-byes. Our first rescue was a total success and our MacGregor sailboat did wonderful! After dropping them off we tied our boat up to the loading dock next tothe slips and waited for the wind to die down before we tried to put it in the slip. Thankfully we had bought some salad and steak and so we got our new Magnum BBQ out and Craig attached it to the rail and we had our first BBQ'd steaks. IT WAS WONDERFUL! The last picture is of an amphibious thing. It would drive into the water and drive around in the water and then back up on the bank. Pretty entertaining. Our weekend of firsts turned out to be a great weekend that we will never forget!
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