just an other rainy day

A lot of people wake up and cheek the weather channel to give them self an idea of what the day will have in store for them. When most of these people see stormy conditions with wind gusting to 25 mph and scattered showers they think there day is over. This is not the case with me. When I see heavy wind in the forecast I immediately start thinking about who I can convince to go sailing with me. I make a few phone calls then grab my gear and head to the bay. I sail a few different kinds of boats but on windy days my favorite would have to be a vanguard 420. This fourteen foot boat is sailed with two people, two sails and a trapeze. Ill start to rig the 420 and its right about then that my friend Dennis will show up. He will usually be even more excited about the weather then I am. We rig the boat as quickly as we can make sure all the lines are as tight as we can make them; on windy days having all the lines as tight as they can go helps prevent capsizing. Finally were off, we get the boat in the water, hop in and immediately start to feel the wind push us. On stormy days these boats can reach speeds of close to twenty mph which on the water seems like forty. As Dennis and I cruse around the bay we notice some waves forming from the wind and decide to try and catch some. Because the boat is so small and light they can catch waves and use the wave to accelerate. When we come up to a wave we would like to catch we throw our body weight forward, this is called oching and pull our sails is really fast which is called pumping this gives us the small boost we need to drop in on the wave the wave shoots us across the bay. At this speed we couldn’t help but scream at the top of out lungs, were flying now with wind coming from behind catching wave after wave. After a while we decide to try our luck up wind and decide to gibe around. Gibing is the process of turning the boat around and letting the sails swing over your head. A lot of boats flip when trying to gibe on windy days we go it quickly and make it look easy. Now with us sailing into the wind the boat is even more likely to flip because the wind and the sail make an angle where the wind just wants t push the sail over. We decide to even increase the chances of flipping by pulling the sails all the way in. Although this increases the chances of flipping it also makes us go much faster. The boat is now right on the brink of flipping. We are doing everything we can to keep it flat and keep it moving so we can enjoy this wild roller coaster ride before we know it were are back to the beach were the boat is kept. We sail in derig and head home. Thinking yep just another rainy day