No longer will they be called rainbow sails. My dad informs me this is Tequila Sunrise. I found out more about how my dad got the boat this weekend. He went on one ONCE and then decided it would be cool to get one. This was 1978 and it was his first big investment. He picked out the sail color and chose this one, called Tequila Sunrise by Hobie Cat. Pretty much the coolest colors you can have in my opinion. He then went out once with someone who had one, and from there on out he learned from his "learn to sail the Hobie way" manual that he gave me this weekend. He's coasted on one pontoon, flipped it, done an endo, pretty much done it all. So now it's my turn, since he gave me the boat.
And I love my boat.
My dad likes to exaggerate and complain that the thing takes "two fucking hours" to set up, but that is so not true. My brother, dad and I made great time getting the mast up and sails. Yesterday we set up the lake and managed to get pretty banged up, but did not flip! Brent was the first to eat it. He was on the trapeze wires, just hanging out, because we didn't wear our harnesses. So basically there are these trapeze wire that come off the top of the mast. They are connected under the trampoline and have rings on them that you can hold onto. They also have little metal pieces that you can clip into if you are wearing a harness (like a big old lady diaper type thing). So he had his feet on a pontoon and a trap wire in each hand. Instead of being stretched out all the way his arms were kind of bent and so were his knees. So we got up on one pontoon ( =very fast) and he was sort of leaned out, but then the boat came back down and he was knocked off balance. He lost a wire, then the other, then tried to grab the edge of the tramp. I managed to pull him up when he reached over to me, but he got slammed pretty good and has lots of bruises.
Then later I was out on the wires, leaning way back and we got a gust and I lost my balance and some how managed to swing my self in front of the boat. I totally lost the wires and was clinging to the tramp. So this basically means that the bottom half of my body was in the water and I was being plowed into by the boat. I managed to scramble back on before any major damage happened. After getting back into an arm of the lake we decided to head back or risk loosing our power (wind). We let our sails out and headed back in at a leisurely pace while sipping on beverages in our cooler.
Today we went out on a 31' boat with some of my dad's friends, talked a bit, jumped off the back and swam, and then had them bring us back to the dock when the wind picked up. It looked like it was going to be "gnarly" and we had to be really careful getting the sails up. We were going pretty good, but the wind was weird and swirly, so we didn't stay out long. I sailed over half the time, and all the way back. My dad is not a technical sailor, so I'm not going to be either, but I don't mind that. I have fun just feeling for the wind. I've got to get a few new parts, but the boats doing pretty well. It came down easy too, which was nice.
So I'm burnt from rafting Friday, my arms are sore from rafting and sailing, I've got bruises, and a weird rash, but I am a very, very happy girl.
*edited to add: They have tequila sunrise sails on the first episodes of The O.C. Their sail number is: 50862. Every sail number is unique and in order. Just thought that was interesting.