Dry suit testing by ME sailing team at Tuck’s Point.
(Courtesy Photo)
Members of the ME coed sailing team catch a ride out to the floats to set the sails and prepare the gear for their first on-water practice with the Landmark School.
(Photo Paul Clark)
The sailing team is back in action in Manchester harbor. While winter seems only a week or two behind us, spring still seems somewhere in the future.
We pulled the boats off the winter racks, stepped the masts, and tracked down all the critical missing parts.
We carried the six 420s down the beach into the water and sailed them out to the MSA docks, which had been set up for us only two days prior. Even the dock at Tuck’s Point consists of only a single float at the end of the companionway. Except for us, the harbor is empty.
On the second day we waded into the chilly harbor and swam out to a small dock to see if our dry suits could withstand water temperatures in the 30s and air temps in the mid 40s.
Thankfully, only two of the suits required some patching to keep out the leaks. For everyone else, we could have stayed in the water for quite a while, given the natural flotation of the air in the dry suits as well as the buoyancy of our “Personal Flotation Devices”.
We have a very young team, with only a few returning high schoolers and a new crop of 7th and 8th graders, who are eager to step up to the challenge and learn a new sport. The waters of Manchester Harbor beckon to us each afternoon, as we learn to tack and gybe, to luff, reach and run, and begin to understand the racing rules. We will have a full schedule of racing against other North Shore teams, and hope to have some good competition.
