One of the things I did this summer was hang around at one of our local boat clubs. I've learned to kayak in the last couple of years which has been great fun.My little brother Matt had started sailing last year and his favorite thing to do was rave about how awesome it was. In the spring I asked Mum if I could do a sailing class because I had learned everything there was to know about kayaking in the northwest arm. Mum said yes, and sighed me up for a class. Now, you have to understand when I came to the boat club to learn how to kayak, I already knew somewhat how to do it, not so with sailing. I got to the program and we had to play the name game. I HATE the name game. So of course I happen to be right in the middle where I had to say everyone's name and what they liked that started with the same letter as their name. I was also expected to come up with one of these for myself. When my turned rolled around I started by forgetting at least three the peoples names and clumsily asked them who they were again, then after that I had realized I had been so concentrated on remembering peoples names that I hadn't come up with my own so I blurted out, and I quote " I'm Sarah and I like silence" facepalm. A couple strange looks crossed faces and the game went on. After that I was taught what a tack was and with all the other kids was made to practice it on land. The sea was too rough to go out that day and so we learned some stuff inside then played for the rest of the afternoon. a class had left their boats out on the water and so we were supposed to learn how to de-rig them. That didn't go very well, I didn't make any mistakes but I didn't really help very much. That first day was pretty bad.One the second day I was in a boat called an echo with a kid I'll call him AN, he was supposed to be the captain but after continually pointing in the wrong direction the instructor suggested we switch. We did and it went fine until we nearly crashed in to a very expensive yacht. Shortly afterwards I tipped the boat and along with poor AN was enveloped in the icy waters of the Arm. It went better after that. I learned how to tack( a kind of zig-zaging maneuver you do too go towards the source of the wind) and to turn the boat into irons( facing in to the wind) so it would stop. when I docked I did a good job and despite being soaked was pretty happy. In the three days that followed I had only three foe paws

1. putting a boat on the ground of the boathouse without anything under it
2. letting go of the rudder and having my boat turn around in circles for really fast knocking me in the head with the boom( a metal pole that holds the bottom of a sail strait) until I could gather my wits and take control
3. Asking someone to hold the mast while I took the last supporting wire out, he did but when I had trouble undoing the wire. A kid asked the mast holder a question and he let go to answer it just as I undid the wire, around 35lbs of weight dropped and barely missed another kids head. I am going to do everything in my power to make sure that it never happens again.

The rest of the time was great, I learned some really awesome stuff and had a few funny experiences

-Zørxs

P.S. I'm sorry about bad spelling/punctuation I was working on this for a while and I'm too tired to do an edit.