Sailing

Like paragliding, sailing is yet another wind powered and environment friendly leisure sport. As long as the weather behaves I dare to say that sailing is considerably less dangerous and more relaxing than paragliding and almost as fun. I say almost because I personally think that paragliding is more fun to do but also it is less weather permitting and only can be safely performed on calm days with winds ranging from 25 to 40 km/h. Anything less and you don’t go anywhere but the ground. Anything more and God knows where you will end up.

You also can be a bad sailor and still be relatively safe at all times but the same cannot be said about paragliding where full concentrations is required at all times.
If you are and unskilled sailor, as long as you remember to let go of the sails when in doubt you are OK because by default an un tensioned sail tend to stop the boat and prevent it from cap sizing.

The real challenge in sailing is mastering the techniques required to convert all the available wind speed into the maximum possible boat speed in the desired direction.

I was quite surprised to learn that the maximum speed that a sailing boat can achieve using modern sails is when cruising perpendicular to the direction of wind.
Also, I find very interesting all the sailing terms and the diversity of knots that are commonly used by sailors.

On the summer of 2003, my dad, brother and his girlfriend took a sailing course at the Rocky Point Sailing Association. Since then we have gone sailing a few times and have really enjoyed ourselves.

Now my father has volunteer himself to help repairing the worn out 4-20’s and Lasers by refurbishing the hulls and constructing new center boards and tillers.