Saturday, April 11, 2009

Sailing on Zippity

Our ride "Zippity"This evening I had another opportunity to sail with Allen Bates on his J105 “Zippity”.  Allen is the organizer of the Houston Sailing Meetup Group.  He also owns Seabrook’s B Sailing Club.  Allen has been sailing since he was 12 years old.  He is primarily a racer and is very knowledgeable in all the dynamics of sailboat racing.

This is the second trip I have taken with Allen on Zippity.  It is always a blast.  My normal sailing style is cruising so this is a very nice change of pace.  You can learn so much more about sailing when you are on a racing boat that responds quickly to any changes that you make to your sail trim.  Allen is also a very good teacher and freely shares his knowledge with anyone that is willing to listen.

For this trip, we sailed close hauled upwind changing tacks a couple of times until we crossed the Houston Ship Channel.  Once we got to the other side, we tacked and sailed back across the channel.  Once across we sailed a beam to broad reach in order to get the spinnaker ready.   With the kite up, we flew up toward the Houston Yacht Club executing a couple of very good jibes.  I have only had the opportunity to run with a spinnaker a couple of times in the past.  This was definitely the best.  This was the longest time I have had at the helm with the spin up.  Great learning experience and a very pleasant sail.

Thanks Allen!

Allen’s Meetup.com group is located at http://sailing.meetup.com/61/

B Sailing Club is located at http://www.bsailing.com/

Sailing on Zippity

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging

No comments:

Post a Comment