Ever since I was a little girl I knew I wanted to live near the water. Each Summer my parents took us on a holiday to a small French island named île d’ Oléron. I remember we would stroll along the boulevard every night and I would get a “mint” iceblock after dinner while I could hear the waves crashing in the background. The beach became my happy place.
I arrived in Australia in 2019 when I fell in love with surfing, feeling the sand between my toes and getting my hair salty. Two years later I met my Casey, utterly grateful that we had our love for the ocean in common. When Casey was little he was given a task at school to write a letter to himself about what “he would like to become as an adult”. This letter then had to be buried and a tree was planted on top. Casey’s letter wrote “when I grow up I want to be a sailor”. And so he did.
Evolving from a kid’s dream, yesterday my sailor got to take me out on the lake giving me my very first lesson. Casey has a little Hobie 16 which, without my knowing, was named the Kimberly when he first participated in a local race a few months ago.
I was a little bit nervous at the start, especially about setting up the boat with just the two of us and holding up the 8 meter mast. Thankfully, Casey is a very patient instructor and everything went smooth. It was a beautiful day to learn how to sail with blue skies and light winds (about 10 knots).
My first impression about sailing was that there are a lot of ropes to pull haha and that despite Casey’s warnings to watch out for the boom I somehow still managed to hit my head (plenty of times). On a Hobie Cat you get to sail with two people max while you are seated on the trampoline. Although staying seated on the trampoline did not last very long since Casey convinced me to hang off the boat in the trapeze. Throwing a mild tantrum at the start (no way I’m not doing this), I eventually had a go at hanging in the trapeze and Casey was right, I did really love it!
We ended up sailing around the lake all day and although I do need a little practice on knowing the difference between “bearing away” and “sailing upwind” lol, I cannot wait to go out on the boat again. There is so much more to learn around jiving, tacking and all the different parts of the boat.
We ended our little sailing adventure having fish and chips (very Aussie) at the Tuross boatshed since we forgot to pack lunch and some of us were very hangry at 4:30 PM (whoops). Cheers to many more days on the water and hopefully to one day sailing away in a bigger boat…
Kimmy is den bush in 