Having traveled quite often at the company i previously worked for allowed me to see a few European cities. I suppose you could say that I’ve seen my fair share of neat, tidy, organized “1st” world capitals. But one trip changed me. It happened as I was going through a particular moment of personal change and it not only intensified that change but opened my eyes to the reality of a large portion of a population that lives on the threshold of survival. Ghana. Being a third world country was quite a shock in comparison to all those “clean” European hubs.
Times got tough and I left that company.
Another opportunity presented itself and I’m now under the employment of a major Chinese multinational. An initial training is normal and as I write this I am on my way to China to receive this training. An affair that will last a month.
This is then an attempt to record the experiences of this trip that I expect will be somewhat on the same level of personal impression as Ghana was.
It’s been a while but i think it’s time to log another entry here.
OK, first things first. “Navegante” is finally back in the water again and has been the source of great emotion on the first two sailing outings I've had so far.
A laborious month went quickly by with every bit of spare time spent in completing the tasks that i set out to do before being able to take it out for a sail. After a general wash and removal of superfluous equipment, the cockpit had to be restored. It had laminated wood on the seats and that was screwed on to the fiber seats. After starting to strip this wood i quickly realized that it simply had to go. And it did. I was however, left with the screw holes to deal with, and these were filled with epoxy resin, sanded and finally painted over. The final product isn’t anything perfect, but the outcome is good enough for me.
It is the culmination (or the first step) of a dream that started over three years ago in a boat show down in the Algarve. Having taken the licenses to pilot a recreation boat and a 32 hour sailing course were the personal preparation for this first step. Now comes the time to practice and continue the learning and also to share the experience with those close and those that were witness to the awakening of this yearning for the sea, namely my Spanish teacher who so attentatively listened to my poor excuse for Spanish trying to get the idea across of how i found sailing attractive.
The first day back in the water was a rush of emotion and a particularly stressful one. The last minute preparations were just barely completed. Anyway, the travel-lift lowered us (my friend João that had participated in one of the sailing lessons was to be my helping hand on this task) stern first into the water. This presented the first challenge: reversing is definitely not one of the better abilities of this boat under motor power. So we had a close encounter with the boats close at hand since the entrance to the travel-lift is in a marina cluttered with boats. With a bit of sweat we managed to get the bow pointed in the direction of the exit of the marina and were off into the river, motoring to the usual berth in the next marina downstream.
We motored into the berth and managed to get a perfect parking procedure done. Not bad for our first time. We knew that luck had a hand in helping us and that not all parkings were going to happen this well. Once stopped however, we proceeded to gather ourselves from the initial excitement, get a bite to eat for lunch before taking Navegante out into the river again, this time to try the sails...
The wind must have been blowing in the range of 15 knots so we decided to hoist just the mainsail as the genoa was too big a sail for the conditions and we wanted to get a feel for the boat in any case, learning in steps how it handles in different situations. Yet what joy! With the main hoisted, we started to move and the slow sway offered by the boat was very satisfying, proving immediately that it was indeed a sea kindly vessel. And not too slow at that either! Obviously without any electronic equipment to give us an exact reading of wind and boat speed we could only guess, but intuitively we knew. Other boats with more sail (or rather, better tuned sails since we should perhaps have reefed the main and set the weather jib) weren’t catching us so some thing must have been going right.
We reveled at the progress a couple of rookies were making. Having beat to wind downriver for about an hour we turned around and headed back to the marina, fulfilled and satisfied with our first outing. As it happens, our second docking wasn’t so successful and a fool I must have seemed trying to maneuver Navegante to the berth. But fortunately nothing too tragic happened and we managed to steer clear of the other boats.
And so our first sailing day with Navegante ended.