So, last weekend I was invited to go crew on a small sail boat in Lagos Harbour. The boats are 3 person, 18', "lightning." This Yacht club has only 2 classes which sail - these sailboats and they have a bunch of Hoby Cats also. So, I got invited out on 'Race Day' and this particular day, we had 2 races about 90mins each.
A bit of background: I don't have a clue how to sail. I have been in a boat before and I have even sailed a boat by myself, but I never really knew what I was doing. So, I was #3 in the boat which means that I didn't have to work the sails or rudder - I just shifted my weight back and forth to keep the boat flat in the water. The wind was quite strong this particular day, making tacking quite fun as the boat moves quickly and you get to hang off the side of the boat to try to keep it from tipping over.
The race course is around about 5 buoys which are all over the Lagos harbour. Of course as this is an active harbour, there are ships moving in and out of the harbour. Most are small fishing trawlers and such but there were a couple LARGE container ships and fuel tankers moving about. At one point in the first race, a very scary thing happened where a 100' trawler drove over one of the sail boats! The crew of the sail boat jumped out of the boat before getting hit... and the Yacht Club rescue boats raced over to pull them from the water! Pretty scary to watch, so none the less we avoided the ships for the rest of the race!
The great thing about it was while we were sailing down wind and there is not much work to do - you really forget about all the hussle - bussle that is going on just a few hundred meters away.
So, we made a few mistakes while sailing - jib lines tangled up and 1 poor Gybe (my fault) which resulted in us placing ~5th or 6th in both races - but at least we finished and had a good time. Unfortunately for my career, the skipper was the Executive Director for Mobil here in Nigeria... so, I had better get back to work to make up for it!
Cheers, RQ
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