This morning when the group from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute boarded Woodwind and I told them that by the end of our training session that they would be able to take over and sail this 74′ boat around a course we gave them without any help from us, you should have heard the comments thrown our way.
So this is how we started. After going over the basics…This is the pointy end and this is a sail. Just kidding we started out with boat terminology, points of sail, where is the wind coming from, tacking and gybing and all the other fun stuff.
We then broke into 4 groups: Helm and mainsail trim team, Jib and Stay sail trim team, Navigation team and the Fisherman sail trim team. They spent the next 2 hours practicing everything we showed them.
After a well deserved break and a great lunch, the teams broke back up into their individual stations and the challenge was on. We set a course from the Naval Academy sea wall out to certain navigational aids and back. But on the way they had to navigate through a channel and keep watch for shallow water areas. They proved up to the task.(Congratulations to all).
After a re-cap talking about what worked well and what didn’t and how all this related to how they work in their workplace we dropped sails and headed for home.
Job well done everyone!!
Remember when you gave me those skeptical looks when you first came aboard and I said you would be able to do this 🙂