NewSailingDiary

The recent whirlwind of email in support of the Sailing Dairy led me to realise that the site has many female visitors. Since my daughter
Vanessa got her first blast on the ice last week I thought her impressions of the day would be a good read and inspiration for other gals to
come out and give it a try. Vanessa is currently attending University of Maine at Farmington and majoring in Elementary education. It
sounds like she plans on teaching her dad a thing or two. The following is Vanessa's account of her first day on Walker Pond.

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I have a lot in common with my dad. We both have a need for speed, bad tempers, and we get bored easily. We pick up hobbies and
become obsessed with them until there is nothing more to learn. I can usually be found at the ancient Singer Fashion Mate Model 237
sewing machine upstairs. What is now MY sewing room used to be dad’s office. I make bags out of old sails and leftover Naugahyde from
dad’s upholstery days on Yellow Fever. That is usually as close as I get to iceboating. But on Easter Sunday, all that changed.

I woke up on Sunday morning and thought to myself, "Well, I guess I’ll try iceboating." I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I
arrived at Walker’s Pond to see four iceboats tooling around. MIA 2 had its runner in the air more than it was on the ice. The bright orange
one was going pretty fast. Dad and the remaining boat were down at the far end of the pond. I stared at the ice thinking, "Am I really
gonna do this?!"

The boys all brought their boats in for a coffee break. Throughout the day I realized they liked to take these brief rests to shoot the breeze,
compare rides, and get a boost of caffeine. I finally met the man on one runner, Mark Kindschi. I also met his wife Mia, who I had
coincidentally had taken a workshop with the night before. If you look up "small world" in the dictionary, Deer Isle is included in the
definition. Bonnie came skidding to a halt in his bright orange boat. Uncle Mike was in the black one, and of course I recognized Yellow
Fever, also known as "the other woman" at home. My mom has to read love novels if she wants romance. Unless you have three runners, a
curvaceous sail, and a comfortable seat, my dad probably isn’t interested.

The coffee break came to an end. Dad got up to assemble Platapuss, my ride for the day. He asked if I wanted the red sail or the white
one. "Is there a difference?" I asked. They all just chuckled like they knew something I didn’t. Bonnie, Mark, and Uncle Mike took off down
the pond, leaving dad and I to begin our training session. Once Platapuss was complete, I hopped in her cold, uninviting seat.

Dad rode co-pilot on the back runners for the first few times. I got a feel for the wind and the steering. Dad made sure to instruct me how
to slow down and stop and asked me multiple times if I knew how to do it. As you may have read in the last post, I’ve had a few problems
with speed in the past. So dad wanted to be absolutely sure I knew how to put on the brakes. Let out the sail and head INTO THE WIND.
Now that I knew where the brake was, dad thought I was ready to be on my own.

"I’ll be in the middle to coach you a bit. How do you slow down?"
"Head INTO the wind."
"Right. Now you’re gonna go a little bit faster without me on there." Duh, dad, I thought to myself. But then I was off! The runners felt
shaky and my helmet felt tight and the sheet string was everywhere and I wasn’t supposed to wrap it around my hands and…I had about
three seconds of panic before the sheer excitement and adrenaline of wind and ice hit my brain. Freezing chips of ice kept flying up and
hitting me in the face but I didn’t want to put down the helmet face shield because I wanted to see every second! When I got going really
fast I would grimace, turn my head, and hope for the best. I kept going like this until I REALLY got going and then I would have no choice
but to put down the face shield. There was no need for coaching. I skipped from training to the this-is-so-fun! Stage. I knew it was time to
go in when my hands were so cold I couldn’t pull in the sheet anymore. I didn’t realize how cold I was until I stopped.

I made a few clothing adjustments and headed back out with dad trailing close behind. It was like a big yellow daddy teaching the baby
platypus how to sail. Except the baby platypus was getting faster than mama by the second! Luckily, there were no cops around when I hit
35.2 mph!

It saddens me to know that it was my first and probably final ride of the season. But it was so nice to FINALLY understand what the
iceboating bug is all about. I finally understand why dad spends hours in the basement working on boats, why he spends hours waiting for
the right conditions, then hours on the computer writing about the conditions, then back to the basement for tinkering. I know dad was just
as excited to have someone in the family understand how it feels. And damn does it feel good. I was beginning to think there was nothing
good about Maine winters. Iceboating gave me just the shot of life I needed. It was also nice to actually do something with dad. He isn’t into
sewing anything but sails so we couldn’t really collaborate there. Dad might think this is really something special but he’ll regret it next
winter when I’m out there kicking his ass every day! Hope you’ve enjoyed my post. Fan mail can be sent to vanessa.grindle@maine.edu. LOL
(as dad would say) but really, if you want to contact me that’s my e-mail.