Hello Everyone: Well, my hubby and I live in St. Louis, MO and we are beginning to think about the upcoming sailing season. We are newbies . . . period! We bought our 73 Sunfish at the beginning of August last year and took it to the lake for the first time about two weeks later. Well, to make a long story short - we struggled. We practiced sitting on it without the sail. Then, we put up the sail, tipped it over, and practiced uprighting it according to the the "Learn to Sail in 3 Days" pdf a number of times. We had no problems doing this until the last time. We tipped the boat over and then my husband uprighted it AND THEN the wind caught the sail and the boat took off across the lake without us! WE WERE MORTIFIED AND FREAKED OUT! I had always wanted to be an olympic swimmer and I definitely exercised my dream as I sprinted after our sunfish. I was able to eventually catch up with it, but we were both SO frazzled that we decided it was time to take a rest. Honestly, we never got back on the lake for the remainder of the season. A couple of years ago, I built a makeshift sailboat from an inflatable, sail, and some spars. We did pretty well, but had problems tacking because we had no dagger board. We both decided that we really wanted to learn to sail in a real boat and unfortunately, the boat almost "ran away". Our first mistake was taking the boat out in 10mph winds. I do not think we were ready for that at all. We both have an understanding of things, but what did we do wrong for the boat to just take off without us. One minute we had our hands on it and the next, it was half way across the lake. Can anyone soothe our fears and bring us some encouragement? We don't want this to happen again!!!
Jamie
Jamie