So what does a Midwest sailor do when the ice fishermen are sitting on his sailing lake? I guess he could join them and take up ice fishing. Let's see; put on enough clothes to make motion nearly impossible, sit on an empty Home Depot bucket (this is the designer bucket of choice by discerning ice fishermen) and if you are lucky take home a fish or two with only a mild case of frostbite in your fingers. Hmmm, does anybody manufacture an icebreaker sailboat?
Instead Brenda and I sail in our heads while sitting in our faithful old two person comfy chair. A big heavy blanket, mugs of something warm and let the sailing begin. We read endlessly about other people's sailing adventures as well as informational texts on sailing. We plan our annual trip to the Chicago Strictly Sail Show. This year we have lots of exciting planning to do for an 18-20 day charter in the BVI. We will be chartering a large monohull out of Tortola along with Brenda's sister and her husband. Now that is exciting armchair sailing!
We recently signed up for the NauticEd online courses. If you haven't heard of them, check them out.
http://www.nauticed.org
They offer lots of informative modules designed to give sailors the basics (and a bit more) of skippering a charter boat. We signed up for the Bareboat Charter Master Rank courses and have enjoyed working our way through them. They include an online logbook to document your sailing resume which is pretty neat. We spent an hour or so typing in the 200 or so days of sailing (Brenda has kept a file of nearly every sail we have done) into the logbook which can then be sent to charter companies. It documents sailing days, course work, days at anchor, days in a marina, etc..
Check them out. If you use this promo code, "wrinklescode" (all lower case and no spaces), and you get $15.00 off any class you sign up for.
Now isn't that better than a bucket chair on ice?
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