The sky was clear, the temperature mild, brown leaves covered much of the ground area under trees. Yet many still held fingers of colors, red, yellows, oranges and reflected sunlight to dance off into the eyes of those who cared to look. It was another great late Autumn day in Northern Cal. Sunday morning is my favorite travel time to Point Richmond where the Mariners classes are being held. Sunday morning there is only a small amount of traffic. I take the minor hwy through the hills and ranch lands of the countryside and see more of nature than of man’s work. It is a nice time to travel.

I arrive at the marina the water is flat with dancing rays of sunshine on it’s surface. Life is good, I am feeling blessed. The trick by “Zen” standards to to feel this way all the time, even when things are not so good, to still feel blessed. Each moment good or bad is a treasure….Really by “Zen” thought there is no good or bad moments it is all how we choose to see/live it… Kind of like there are no bad sailing days, some are just better than others…but I digress.

This is weekend two of three for the USCG 6-pack training. This weekend beside practice on plotting is Rules of the Road. The second section to mastered. As before much of it is review. However there is large part on Light and day shapes that is new for me. I will need to do a lot of reading and studying on this over the next 2 weeks. I am traveling next week to DC. I can use that airplane time for study along with nights in the hotel. Those periods are perfect for study.
Class runs as before, yet at a little faster pace now. The plotting practice, I understand but still need to put in the practice time, because I makes small enough errors that throws my answers off.

The “brain” from S.A. is not in class this weekend, he had something to attend to, so will need to make up the time. Others have noticed his “style” and several remarks were made about without him here how will we find out the answers to “things” that came up. Everyone got a larf ( laugh).

There was a guy sitting in on class who was up for instructor for future classes. He is a old hand in the sailing circles. He came over and chatted with me a bit. Interesting, he mentioned and it also came up with another fellow at the ASA conference about the lack of Blacks in sailing. He mentioned that he (He is not Black) did some work with Capt Paul of the Black Sailors Summit and helped him regularly with the annual event, and getting people of color exposed to sailing, the question was did I know him. I said yes I do, matter of fact and yes there is a lack of Blacks in main stream Sailing. He, the instructor (current) and I agreed that has a lot to do with the perception that sailing is a rich-man sport. Therefore not a path walked by many. Case in point I am the only person of color in this class as is usually the case with most that I attend. One of the good things about this blog and my other is that, some people of color from Black Tokyo and other areas I go get to read that sailing is not about one’s color or size of bank account. Sailing is something that can be done and enjoyed by anyone. There are ways to sail without owning a boat, or having much money.

Back to the class. It is a good weekend, everyone is settled into the program now. Many of the people are “getting it”. As I stated before the material is not that hard, it is the questions. They are purposely done weird to throw one off and some are even written wrong. When answering the question the answer you come up with is not the same answer that is written as correct, you have to figure out which is the closest to what you have, and is that correct. Let say you come up with an answer that is 5 knots Lat 180 .30 00 n, Long 75.00.09 w, There will be an answer that is near to that, also one that is 180 degrees opposite of that, in case you did the residual reading by mistake. So no guess if your answer is right, because you will chose the wrong right answer if you measured wrong. Did you follow that ?

Well lunch is over time to get back at it. I will finish this later…

 

Jump ahead 3 days…

This week is the get down to business study week. Right now as I am finishing this post, I am flying to DC for a few days (work). I have however brought all my books and study charts with me. I will be hitting the books shortly on the flight and again once I get to the hotel tonight. That will be my of hours work, studying. I really want to pass this on the first time and be done with it for the next 4.5 years. As I said before next year I just want to do two teaching level test for the ASA and work mostly on just sailing practice & boat, my Japanese and my Praying Mantis and Tai Chi.

The last weekend of class will be on Deck General. That will cover misc on deck things, hardware, knots, lines, etc. So cram a lot on Navigation, Plotting, Rules of the road this week. Then the new stuff and review next week. After that the test is on Thursday the 20th. Then Christmas holidays, whahooooooooo. I am sooo ready for a break.