So. It's been five months. Crazy, eh?
So where am I? What's changed? Who have I become? To be honest I haven't thought about it much, that will have to wait for my final blog post, when I've spent some time thinking over those questions. (I will do one last post hopefully on the last day of the course, when everything is finished.) That's not to say that I haven't been thinking about what's happened, only that my thoughts have been more directed at what has happened.
I walk down the pontoon and think of the first time I walked down it; I go into dinner and remember the first meals I had at UKSA - how quiet it was, how simple. I didn't even know half the people I do now at that point. I go sailing and I set my sail automatically, my eyes flick from going forwards, to my sail, to water traffic and back again, I keep my boat flat, I adjust the five essentials, and I tamper with my sail controls to tune the sail correctly: I can't remember learning how to do it, it feels like I've been known how to do it since the beginning. Still, I can remember the first sessions I had sailing: beam-reach to beam-reach, wobbly tacks, aching head, being so pleased that I could dry-capsize. Then I kayak and I know I can roll now, I could tell you how best to get the most speed from it, how to keep it going straight, or how to turn a sea kayak. And still every time I go out I improve a little more: the theory I know, I practise; what I can do, I practise more. I needn't go into windsurfing: I plane, I fall in, I get up and do it again. And again. And again.
All around UKSA ghostly memories walk around, replay themselves in my head, times fast forwards to the present day and flows back again. And why? Because it's coming to an end? My life for five months is about to come to an end, and five months is such a small amount of time, but so much has happened. It's flashed past, especially this last half since I've come back from Egypt. And now it nears its completion.
I'm looking forward to spending some time back at home, but I'm also excited to be coming back to work here. With this step nothing will ever be the same again. I can never unlearn what I've learnt, even if the worst were to happen and I never taught anyone so much as a single lesson, these five months would leave a scar on my life, living on in the practical skills that I cannot choose to keep or forget.
But should I continue, which I intend to, then I can step from strength to strength, gaining in every day experience and confidence, growing each year in ability and technique. This time comes to its cut off day, soon the training ends.
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Sunday, 12 June 2011
Dan? Dan? Oh there you are :D
Yep, it's me. Again. And such a lot has gone on since the last blog, not least of which is that I now have a job over the summer at a watersports centre up the river from UKSA. It's much smaller, but as I've been saying to everyone: UKSA is a rather-unique, oddly-massive centre so I was never going to be going somewhere that was its equal. This centre is focused more on sailing than anything else, and, from what I've seen of the team, they're amazing. Really nice, really welcoming, lots of laughing, yea, looks like it's going to be a good summer.
What else has been going on.
Last Saturday I had a group from Aiming High, which is a project or system that allows disabled kids of greater or lesser disabilities to get a chance to do watersports for free/reduced price (one of the two, not sure which, think it's free though) I was with one other instructor, one who had been on my original instructor training at the beginning of the course and who now is working at UKSA, it was cool to work with him again. We had two kids and their parents but only the kids did the activities. It pretty much works on asking the kids what they want to do and then seeing if we can do it. In the end we took them windsurfing in the morning, which was loads of fun. We had a few water-confidence/board confidence games where they sat on the boards in the water and did some games, like playing catch, or gladiators (where they had to stand u and rock the board until one of them fell in, leaving the victor to fall in after them usually) Then we got the sails out for the boards and got them windsurfing. Their balance wasn't always great but both of them did amazing and were actually windsurfing (by that I mean we walked them out from the shore, pointed them towards land, helped them get the sail up and then they held onto the boom and the wind pushed on the sail and took them back to the land) They both really enjoyed it and did extremely well. Then we went back to UKSA for lunch and got changed out of the wetsuits and back into nice dry clothes.
In the afternoon they decided they'd quite like a pool session (much to my relief :D ) and so we spent the afternoon in the swimming pool. We took a few kayaks in there with us to play around with and there were some balls in there too. It was just a giant splash around and lots of fun. There was a weight in the pool which was ridiculously heavy. There isn't a gentle incline to the deep end but a sudden drop towards the end of the pool; if you held onto the weight and stepped off the ledge into the deep bit it would drag you to the bottom and you could walk on the bottom. Which is very, very cool. I then took it a step further and standing with my back to the ledge I held the weight to my chest and let myself fall backwards. It's strange to feel the weight pushing you down, but if you kept your eyes open you could imagine what i would be like to be chucked into water with a heavy stone around your legs or any other heavy object you'd care to imagine. Quite a cool thing to see, especially see multiple times as I'm sure most people would only see it once... for the first and last time. It did kill my eyes however and when I got out of the pool they were horribly red and painful. Lots of washing with freshwater and trying not to rub them later and by the end of the evening they were ok. I can only remember one previous time where they were that bad, and it's not good memories. I was too young to really understand it or put up with the pain then, but I still remember sticking my head under the tap at home to try and rinse the water from my eyes, and not wanting to stick my head under the water. It was a long drawn out affair from what I remember. :S :S
And then this week we've been cat sailing, no NOT sailing little fluffy things that would scratch us into pieces if we even tried it, but catamaran sailing, i.e. two hulled dinghies. They are scary as. They go ten times faster than normal dinghies and when capsized you end up two/three metres from the water which you HAVE to fall off. There is no such thing as a "dry capsize" as far as "Cats" are concerned. There are also more ways of capsizing it. You have your basic "wind push it onto the side" capsize. You also then have pitch-poling and cartwheeling (which THANKFULLY we did neither of) Pitch poling is when both the hulls go under the water and produces the same effect as when you slam on your brakes on a bike, it flips up forward onto its front and everyone gets thrown forward. And when you're sailing in fairly gusty wind and trying to go as fast as possible (which is pretty fast in a cat) even the idea of pitch poling is terrifying. And I'm pretty sure you all know what a cartwheel is... just imagine that happening to a cat... yea... yea, i know.
Let me explain trapezing to you: you get tightly strapped up in a harness and, when out on the water, you clip onto a line which runs from the mast to the hull, put your feet on the side of the hull and push out, so the only bit of you touching the boat is your feet. And you're attached to the boat... combine this with capsizing, pitch poling or cartwheeling and you get thrown about all over the place, swung around the front of the boat or anywhere in fact. As I said we were fortunate that this never really happened to us, but still... :S :S :S There was one capsize where I fell off the hull and slammed into one of the shrouds (metal wires that hold the mast up) with my neck. It's still a little sore but there was no big damage done, thankfully it had a plastic coating. Another time the hook of my harness got caught on the side of the hull and I was left suspended in the air with no way of getting down (there was no purchase for my feet to push on to lift myself off) I did get myself off eventually but phew, close one. Had the cat fully inverted then.... Now this is all making Cat sailing sound ridiculously dangerous... it's no more dangerous than windsurfing or kayaking in whitewater or getting whacked over the head by the boom, it's just because they zip around so fast that it feels scarier when you're on them it's NOT that they're more dangerous. Well we had the assessment for the cats and I passed which is cool. So I'm cat endorsed (meaning I'm qualified to teach people to sail cats now).
At the moment there is the Isle of Wight Festival on and so yesterday I went up to Medina Valley centre to meet up with some new friends and after a little bit of food we got some canoes out and went for a paddle up the river to watch the festival for free :D :D (tickets can be over one hundred and fifty pounds) The site is about 200-300 metres away from the centre's pontoon so it wasn't a long journey. You could see the lights and one of the big screens so you could kind of watch it. Much preferable to going in though and having to pay stupid amounts of money. On the river it was really busy with loads of boats moored up and people on the decks watching, drinking and dancing... well not so much of the dancing, mainly just drinking and watching. (in that order.) Very chilled out. On the opposite bank there were crowds of people who were camped out and listening in from their free spaces. However if you put a foot on the side of the bank which the festival was on you got mobbed by security guards. Crazy.
And yea, i think that's everything I was going to say... I have three weeks left now :O :O :O three weeks of five months. It's going to be good.
What else has been going on.
Last Saturday I had a group from Aiming High, which is a project or system that allows disabled kids of greater or lesser disabilities to get a chance to do watersports for free/reduced price (one of the two, not sure which, think it's free though) I was with one other instructor, one who had been on my original instructor training at the beginning of the course and who now is working at UKSA, it was cool to work with him again. We had two kids and their parents but only the kids did the activities. It pretty much works on asking the kids what they want to do and then seeing if we can do it. In the end we took them windsurfing in the morning, which was loads of fun. We had a few water-confidence/board confidence games where they sat on the boards in the water and did some games, like playing catch, or gladiators (where they had to stand u and rock the board until one of them fell in, leaving the victor to fall in after them usually) Then we got the sails out for the boards and got them windsurfing. Their balance wasn't always great but both of them did amazing and were actually windsurfing (by that I mean we walked them out from the shore, pointed them towards land, helped them get the sail up and then they held onto the boom and the wind pushed on the sail and took them back to the land) They both really enjoyed it and did extremely well. Then we went back to UKSA for lunch and got changed out of the wetsuits and back into nice dry clothes.
In the afternoon they decided they'd quite like a pool session (much to my relief :D ) and so we spent the afternoon in the swimming pool. We took a few kayaks in there with us to play around with and there were some balls in there too. It was just a giant splash around and lots of fun. There was a weight in the pool which was ridiculously heavy. There isn't a gentle incline to the deep end but a sudden drop towards the end of the pool; if you held onto the weight and stepped off the ledge into the deep bit it would drag you to the bottom and you could walk on the bottom. Which is very, very cool. I then took it a step further and standing with my back to the ledge I held the weight to my chest and let myself fall backwards. It's strange to feel the weight pushing you down, but if you kept your eyes open you could imagine what i would be like to be chucked into water with a heavy stone around your legs or any other heavy object you'd care to imagine. Quite a cool thing to see, especially see multiple times as I'm sure most people would only see it once... for the first and last time. It did kill my eyes however and when I got out of the pool they were horribly red and painful. Lots of washing with freshwater and trying not to rub them later and by the end of the evening they were ok. I can only remember one previous time where they were that bad, and it's not good memories. I was too young to really understand it or put up with the pain then, but I still remember sticking my head under the tap at home to try and rinse the water from my eyes, and not wanting to stick my head under the water. It was a long drawn out affair from what I remember. :S :S
And then this week we've been cat sailing, no NOT sailing little fluffy things that would scratch us into pieces if we even tried it, but catamaran sailing, i.e. two hulled dinghies. They are scary as. They go ten times faster than normal dinghies and when capsized you end up two/three metres from the water which you HAVE to fall off. There is no such thing as a "dry capsize" as far as "Cats" are concerned. There are also more ways of capsizing it. You have your basic "wind push it onto the side" capsize. You also then have pitch-poling and cartwheeling (which THANKFULLY we did neither of) Pitch poling is when both the hulls go under the water and produces the same effect as when you slam on your brakes on a bike, it flips up forward onto its front and everyone gets thrown forward. And when you're sailing in fairly gusty wind and trying to go as fast as possible (which is pretty fast in a cat) even the idea of pitch poling is terrifying. And I'm pretty sure you all know what a cartwheel is... just imagine that happening to a cat... yea... yea, i know.
Let me explain trapezing to you: you get tightly strapped up in a harness and, when out on the water, you clip onto a line which runs from the mast to the hull, put your feet on the side of the hull and push out, so the only bit of you touching the boat is your feet. And you're attached to the boat... combine this with capsizing, pitch poling or cartwheeling and you get thrown about all over the place, swung around the front of the boat or anywhere in fact. As I said we were fortunate that this never really happened to us, but still... :S :S :S There was one capsize where I fell off the hull and slammed into one of the shrouds (metal wires that hold the mast up) with my neck. It's still a little sore but there was no big damage done, thankfully it had a plastic coating. Another time the hook of my harness got caught on the side of the hull and I was left suspended in the air with no way of getting down (there was no purchase for my feet to push on to lift myself off) I did get myself off eventually but phew, close one. Had the cat fully inverted then.... Now this is all making Cat sailing sound ridiculously dangerous... it's no more dangerous than windsurfing or kayaking in whitewater or getting whacked over the head by the boom, it's just because they zip around so fast that it feels scarier when you're on them it's NOT that they're more dangerous. Well we had the assessment for the cats and I passed which is cool. So I'm cat endorsed (meaning I'm qualified to teach people to sail cats now).
At the moment there is the Isle of Wight Festival on and so yesterday I went up to Medina Valley centre to meet up with some new friends and after a little bit of food we got some canoes out and went for a paddle up the river to watch the festival for free :D :D (tickets can be over one hundred and fifty pounds) The site is about 200-300 metres away from the centre's pontoon so it wasn't a long journey. You could see the lights and one of the big screens so you could kind of watch it. Much preferable to going in though and having to pay stupid amounts of money. On the river it was really busy with loads of boats moored up and people on the decks watching, drinking and dancing... well not so much of the dancing, mainly just drinking and watching. (in that order.) Very chilled out. On the opposite bank there were crowds of people who were camped out and listening in from their free spaces. However if you put a foot on the side of the bank which the festival was on you got mobbed by security guards. Crazy.
And yea, i think that's everything I was going to say... I have three weeks left now :O :O :O three weeks of five months. It's going to be good.
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