The cost of the lesson for 2 hours is 200 for two people (its about 180 for one person for 2 hours). And the really cool thing is that if you take 8 hours of lessons and a 3 hour test (and pass the test of course) you can be licensed as a real SAILOR! :) hehe. With a sailing license you can sail, and sail and well sail, and maybe teach sailing:) Our instuctor's name is Paul and he is an attorney who got out of lawyering full time to part time and sails for the rest of the time. It was interesting to see how much he knew about sailing and how well he paid attention to the direction and strength of wind (well I guess every sailor has to or else you can't move!) He seemed very in tune with it. Paul took us out on the little dingy sailboat (not the ones in the front of the pic, but alittle farther out). I learned mostly vocabulary, like what a mast it, a boom, genoa, tell tales, stays, cam clamps (not to be confused with clam clamps...which I did confuse during the lesson a few times) windward, leeward, come about, ready about, and we got a really cool sailing book to study too!
If you don't call ready about before come about, you could get hit by the boom, (no seriously its called that!)The most important thing I learned was that the genoa (not the main sail) must be tight, if the wind is not strong it can crinkle, this is called "luffing". You don't want this! When this happens, you have to look at the tell tales (these little strips of lightweight tape) and see which direction the wind is going, if there is luffing, most likely it is going the opposite direction from where you are headed and your main sail is directed, so you must ready about and come about, switch the sails to the other side of the boat, this now becomes leeward side (opposite of where wind is directed towards) and the luffing will stop! Luffing is a bad thing in sailing:) Since I'm done with school for the semester on our staycation coming up, we're going to study alittle and try another lesson. Here is the website of the South Shore Marina in case you are in the area and want to try a lesson - http://www.southshoremarina.com/
