Sailing, Sailing Over The Bounding Main
Often when I am bicycling past the D.C. Marina I see these little dinghy type boats.
Being the landlubber than I am, I wouldn’t know a dinghy from a doo-hickey but these things look like fun.
There is normally an instructor in a motorized boat with a whistle giving instructions. The boats sail around in formation. Every now and then a boat tips over the and the leader in the motorized boat comes to the rescue. Sometimes the boats have colorful sails. I haven’t been able to get a picture of those yet.
I don’t know what it is all about. If anyone knows they can clue me in. I just might have to get my feet wet so to speak and try it some time.
Enjoy the Friday Foto Fiesta.
October 24th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Beautiful picture! The water is so blue! I am landlocked. Can you tell?
October 24th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Scares the beegeebers outta me. Come by and enter my foto fiesta caption this contest.
October 24th, 2008 at 10:45 am
My brother likes to pretend to be white trash but, he sails. I told him that he can’t be a sailor and claim to be white trash. It doesn’t work:-) Hee, hee, hee. Great picture:-)
October 24th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Nice picture of the Potomac, Red!
October 24th, 2008 at 10:52 am
I am GUESSING it is a sailing school… we have them all around my house… I would really like to get my son into it… I mean if we are going to live on the coast in Norway, he might as well be sailing right? Maybe next summer
October 24th, 2008 at 11:10 am
It’s probably a college sailing team. We see the MIT and Harvard teams on the river a lot. I’m not really sure what sailing competitions involve, but judging by the way they practice I don’t think it’s just straight up racing. But I don’t really know anything about it. When we moved here I wanted to try to learn sculling, but it’s pretty expensive and generally involves getting up ridiculously early, so that didn’t happen. My dad had a little sailboat for a while. It was fun to go out on the river with him, but I would always end up getting bored and annoyed with the wind. Guess I’m just not a born sailor.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Don’t know what it is about, but it is a beautiful picture. Stopping in from Candid Carrie–TFS
October 24th, 2008 at 11:49 am
That is just beautiful!
I am terrified of sailing (thanks Jaws!) But, it just looks so pretty
October 24th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
That looks like fun! But WAY too much work. I would be the one in the motorized boat blowing the whistle….. lol
November 18th, 2008 at 3:37 am
I used to take sailing classes in summertime on the Potomac, and these look exactly like some of the boats we used. If this pic was taken more up towards the Anacostia river (towards the city), then they’re probably stationed at Potomac Landing, right by Reagan National Airport. If it’s farther along away from DC, they might be from Belle Haven Marina. Or it might be a college team. But they look more familiar to me than that. We had the people in the rescue boats come and help us sometimes, too.
These boats in the picture are most likely Flying Scots, which are bigger 2-person boats, whereas the ones with colorful sails might either be Hobie Cats or Sunfish (Hobies are big and have 2 hulls, Sunfish are small with one hull). Both are really fun on a windy day, even when they capsize!
Hope that helps.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Claire: I would assume these are from the D.C. Marina since they are right next to it. I know you can take classes from there.
Thanks for stopping by and the information.