Sailing

We don’t have an ocean in St. Louis, but we do have many rivers, and the Mississippi River is a huge one. Steve’s friend, Joe, is a member of a local sailing club. The club had a sailboat race for their members and Joe was the person in-charge of this race, so he invited us to ride on the committee boat. The club has a hut beside the Mississippi River…the boat parking lot.

Sailing boats preparing to put up the sails…let’s go! Joe drove the boat to put out the race markers… I took the chance to get in the captain’s seat when I saw him stand up to check the wind direction. Joe taught me to look at the direction on the compass and I drove to a black marker on the river… Ha-ha! My first driving in the US was not a car, it was a boat!

Oh…raise a white flag. It is not for surrender; it is a countdown timer to the start of the race. Six minutes before the race, the boats get ready – the line between an orange flag pin and the committee boat is the starting line they must cross. Raising the white flag means five minutes until the start; raising the light blue flag means four minutes left. Lowering the light blue flag means one minute left; lowering the white flag starts the race. The starting line is also the finish line. This race has four sailing boats…they raced two rounds.

When the race was over, I asked to ride in one of the sailboats… They were kind enough to swap one of their crew to let us ride back to the harbor in a sailboat; it was fun! Bye-bye!

29.9.07