June 2006

Tenaya has been our home for almost 2 months now. The weather has been much better and we have had many days to practice. Tacking, gybing, running are all working now and we have had time to work on sail trim. This is really fun!

June did not start off perfect. During May we had been in and out of our "box" a few times and while we were still learning how to handle Tenaya at least when we returned we could always say, "Well, we made it back safe and we didn't hit anyone."

We can't say that anymore.

It was not that windy, but there was a cross wind in our channel. I tried to back out and into the wind, just like our instructors had taught us. I was also trying to stay near the windward side of our channel, again exactly as we did in our lessons. But I stayed a little too close and we were getting very near another boat that was safely in her berth, with the owners enjoying the nice afternoon sitting in their cockpit. I shifted into forward and everything would have worked out fine. Except I was afraid we were still too near the other boats so I used the bow thruster to push the bow away from them. A bow thruster allows you to move the bow either direction and is a great aid, but we have been learning to handle Tenaya without using it - partly because it seems like cheating and partly to make sure we can handle her without it. All that would have been fine if I had remembered my high school physics...for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The bow moved away from the other boats just like I planned but the stern moved into the boat we had come so close to, except this time we bumped into her. Luckily we were moving very slow and they had multiple fenders on her stern. She had no damage and Tenaya had only a scrape that came off with some polish. Don't know if they had been anticipating a visit from us or it was their proximity to the fuel dock that was the reason for all their fenders but it was a good thing indeed.