Thursday, July 13, 2006

Sail Boat experience

Summer is the time you would want to be in Norway :) Nice weather and Good sunlight lets you do lots of fun activities in the evenings after work and in the weekends. and July is the Vacation time. Even some shops close for Summer vacations. Thats quite a contrast to many other places.
One of the evenings on a weekday, we had been on a sailing trip with some colleagues who are good in sailing and all the Summer Interns for a Team Building excercise. We split up in 2 boats which are owned by 2 of our colleagues. The boat where I sailed in, was owned by an expert sailor who has travelled around the world ( I mean a complete circle around the world) in his sail boat for 4 years. That is quite impressive. He gave us some basic tips about the sail boat structure and how to use the Main sail and the auxillary sail named Genova and booms to line up with the wind and use the wind speed to go faster. Then he let us work in teams to figure out how to sail into the wind and also with wind on the side and then how to make turns or tack, as it is called in sailing terminology, by shifting the sails from one side of the boat to the other side using the sail ropes. It was a great experience. Since he is an engineer, he also gave us some insights into the fluid dynamics of the wind around the sail which makes it move forward.
It was a pretty interesting trip. I also got to steer the boat for sometime and it felt great to be the sailor. I wonder how it must have felt for him to be on the boat for so long in the seas and then hopping on to many islands along the way. Its so fascinating to read about Travel advntures and I cant imagine how he must have felt about this. He told us he took 2-3 years just for preparation for his Around the world in 4 years trip.
We stopped on a small island to relax and have some food and drinks and then we used to Motor to get back to get back to Oslo. For a first timer on a small sailing boat, it was a wonderful trip for me and weather was just perfect and made it memorable.

Click here for more photos.

1 comment:

Sriram said...

@sid: thanks man.. I saw your Times version.. awsom.. whens the next issue? not much of details though.. maybe u shuld dig into the dirt and write up more next time.. So everyone around u is biting the dust :) whens ur turn buddy??