Aspirations

A few summers ago, we were sailing back from our summer holiday. It had been a nice day with a nice breeze to get us back to the marina. We started up the outboard so we could drop sails and motor into the marina. J. dropped and loosely tied off the jib. This is a practice we have always done, so that if we quickly need to use the sails, they are able to be raised quickly. As J. was dropping the main, the motor sputtered. The L. and J. exchanged looks. Upon checking ... we were out of gas. Back up the main went, tack and tack again. With just the main we couldn't beat into the wind and outgoing current. Up the jib went. With more power on, we made it to the fuel dock, where we decided to spend the night (fuel was closed up). Felt good to pull that trick off. We had even more confidence in our boat ... and ourselves. The next morning, we fueled up, and motored to our slip. Somehow, that didn't carry the same sense of fulfillment.

When we ran across this short YouTube video (Knockabout Sloops blog), we just had to share it. This is engine-less sailing at it's most inspiring - sailing out of the travel-lift, through the docks and docking. Nicely done, too. Wow! And while, at this point anyway, we are not advocating pitching/selling the engine, it would be great to be this confident in our sailing to do this, in case the engine were to break down.

I suppose it is just a matter of practice, practice, and more practice.