Yesterday and today I had the first half of my beginner's sailing class: three hours each day on the water, pretty much left to ourselves to figure out how the sailboat, a Vanguard 15, works. It's sure a lot easier than tall ship sailing: where the Lady has 168 lines, these have three. Two sails versus eleven. And me at the helm instead of a real sailor.

There wasn't much wind yesterday, so we puttered back and forth, caught the breezes as they showed up, and even had a chance to practice "kinetics", where you rock the boat back and forth to scull the sail through the still air, moving the boat very slowly forward. As calm as it was, we did manage to capsize once when both of us forgot to cross the boat on a tack. Today, though, we had a strong, steady wind, and a lot more frantic sailing. My brain is still buzzing from all the speed, and my body thinks it's still on the boat—the couch is heeling hard, about to throw me off. It's not very comfortable. Two more capsizes (capsizings?) today: on the first, I held on until the mast hit the water, then I fell on the boom and got a nice long scrape up my leg from the boom vang block. Also, someone who'd never seen people learning to sail saw us turn over and called 911, prompting a visit from the Fire Department and Coast Guard. They were very friendly, and asked our instructor to give them a warning next time we go out. On the second, we "turtled", got the boat turned all the way upside down, but I managed to right it by standing on the rail.

Four hours in the sun learning to sail, and I'm exhausted. But between the temperature (currently 89 in the house, and feels about the same outside) and the body memory of falling off the boat looping over and over in my head, I wonder if I'll get any sleep..