Working Hard or Hardly Working? You tell me!

For our honeymoon Jaren and I went on a cruise to the Caribbean and although we enjoyed it we also kind of decided it wasn't really the vacation for us. We felt like we were being herded like a group of sheep and even though we were stopping at each island we didn't feel like we were really seeing them and what they had to offer. With that being said there was one day on our honeymoon that really stuck out to us, it was the day that we chartered a sail boat and went sailing. Well, we didn't go sailing someone else took us sailing, but we loved it either way! Since then we have flirted with the idea of getting certified to charter our own boat some time and have done a lot of research on just how to do that. We finally decided to just go for it! Out of all the different options we chose to do a weeklong live aboard with a school called FAIRWINDS. Through this class we hoped to acquire the skills and confidence necessary to be able to charter a boat all on our own. With the boys at Ron and Lisa's we headed down to the beautiful caribbean, home to the amazing Virgin Islands where we would spend the next week doing ... I wasn't really sure what. I mean I knew I would be learning to sail but I didn't really know what that meant. We arrived at Nanny Cay Marina far before our Captain and ran into the other student who we would be spending the week with, Blaire an attorney from Alabama who struck me as kind of boring. Oh well I thought, could have been worse company! Late that night we met our Captain, Captain Ethan who was younger than any of us but obviously a very good people person. Didn't do much that night, just ate dinner and got to know each other a little bit. The next morning we didn't waste any time. Jaren and Blaire were given a "treasure hunt" list of things to find on the boat like the manual bilge pump, life raft, fire extinguisher etc... while I got to do the fun stuff, head to the supermarket with the captain and get the food for a week on a boat! Each morning started at 6:00am when the captain knocked on our door to get us up for an eat with the sun breakfast and then weather update on chanel 16. After that it was time to hit the deck! Our sailing time was spent familiarizing ourselves with the sailing language, doing drill after drill, tack after tack and gybe after gybe. Rasing the sails, lowering them and raising them again. But instruction time didn't just come on the water, when we weren't sailing we found ourselves gathered around the table learning all about charts,the difference between true north vs. magnetic north, and how to pinpoint our exact location in the middle of the islands. The captain was always talking sailing weather he was asking us questions to keep our mids thinking or showing us pictures on his i-phone. Without even realizing it at the time we had become fully immeresed in the sailing world. As the days passed I really came to appreciate and even enjoy Blaire's sense of humor and his company all around as well as the captains patience and confidence in us as students. Each night we happily left our charts and books behind for other things. We were in the caribbean after all and there were beaches to be comb, resteraunts to eat at and snorkeling to be done. To someone on a cruise ship all of these activites were done at a "never heard of it before" beach or bay. Thursday night we took our written test and went over all the answers together. I don't usually think of a written test as something that is rewarding and I didn't think that going into this one either. But for me that's what it was becuase I did well on it. After studying the chart, some fruteration, and hours and hours of drills I understood what was going on and I did well on the test. Friday's day of sailing was the funnest one, there were no drills and we had passed our test so that day we headed out as a team instead of as a student/teacher group. With Jaren at the helm and us sailing up wind I headed to the bow of the boat. I was sunburnt and exhausted but I was having the time of my life up there. I had met new friends, acquired a new skill and at that moment each time the boat came crashing down on a wave I was getting sprayed with ocean water! I had come to love everything about sailing and in the words of the captain "All's good that ends well!"