Sail Trials

Rather frequently my life feels like an Odyssey. While this may make complete sense in the context of my way of traveling, it also happens when I'm staying or living in the same place over a certain period of time, like I've been doing here in La Paz now. The difference is, that instead of my moving through places and other people's lives, there'd be a chain of events and people seemingly moving through mine.

A good example for such an occurrence is my acquaintance to Aïna and Paula of Spain - who (back home) by profession teach children at the Circus "Berlin"; and who happen to carry flutes and red noses in there backpacks, to entertain their (new-found) friends with little songs and performances.
They're some of the most joyful and social people I've ever encountered and they are great company. Others would think the same and it wasn't unusual to find them sitting at a Café in midst a group of new acquaintances; that way and only through them I met some interesting people, I would never have noticed otherwise.

The other day, being part of such a dynamic crowd led to an invitation to a sail trial, conducted by a man named Joshua, who happened to stay at "my" Hotel "Lorimar".

He'd come down from Washington State to buy a sailboat here, and we agreed on coming along to try a 44ft candidate called by the poetic name of "Wind Song".
The crew would consist of him and the yacht broker couple, we volunteered to act as human test ballast.

On yet another perfect sunny day, we filled the ice box with snacks and drinks and started out on our little adventure, first motoring clear of the marina and down a marked channel through the sandbanks of the bay of La Paz.

Alas we had not advanced too far when we hit one of them, treacherously reaching into the channel. With a revving engine, a pulling of the anchor chain and active redistribution of the human ballast(us) we managed to get clear and could continue towards more sound waters. Soon the sails were set and "Windsong" cut the calm waters of the bay.
We sailed along La Paz's palm-tree lined water front and past other yachts and boats anchoring in the bay; the breeze kept up steady, the sun shone warmly and everybody was in a jolly good mood.
I was under deck for a moment when the boat performed a wild dance of swaying from side to side and by the sound of things it seemed to be due to some asynchronous maneuver of our improvised test crew. When finally I made it back up on deck we were headed back to the marina instead of continuing towards the open Sea of Cortez, thus the sail trial had been cut short by the broker couple.

Back on the pier we cheered up Joshua and ourselves with a well-cooled beverage, as a short trip still is better than none.

Joshua bought the "Wind Song".
He's planning on sailing her through Central America and across the Atlantic into the Mediterranean Sea...

It was my first time on a sail boat.