Petrillo - A sail of two idiots: 100+ lessons and laugh from a non sailor who quit the rat race, took the helm, and sailed to a new life in the Caribbean

Copyright 2012 by Renee D. Petrillo. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-178246-3
MHID: 0-07-178246-X

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This book is dedicated to all those dreamers out there. That includes people with adventurous souls and an insatiable curiosity. Or if youre like my husband, someone who lives with such a person. To all you nontraditionalists and nonconformists (even if you just wish you were), this one is for you.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at allin which case, you fail by default.

J. K. ROWLING

You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, thats all.

BERNARD MOITESSIER

Pee to the lee!

UNKNOWN,
but pretty sure it was a male

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed in the things that you didnt do than the ones you did do, so throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover!

MARK TWAIN

Id rather be in my boat, with a drink on the rocks than in the drink, with my boat on the rocks.

UNKNOWN, seen on a T-shirt

.

Just like every hobby or sport, sailing has its own lingo. Some terms are used interchangeably and can get a bit confusing, so I thought Id address a few here. A jib and a genoa (genny) are the same thinga front sail. Usually a genny is bigger than a jib though. Ropes in particular are renamed according to their function. If ropes adjust the wind in your sails, theyre called sheets. Then they can be mainsheets (for the main!) or jibsheets (when adjusting your front sail). If the rope will put your sail up/down or in/out youre talking about a halyard. If youre lucky, your boat will have lazy jacks, which are ropes that run the length of your mast and help guide your mainsail down into a nice, orderly pile on your boom (the horizontal metal or wood beam that holds the bottom of your mainsail taut when its up or stores it when its down). The rope you use to tie off your dinghy to various objects is your painter. Michael and I spent a lot of time pointing to ropes and simply calling them lines, which is the generic term for ropes on boats. Aft is front. Stern is back. If facing forward, port is left; starboard is right. A galley is a kitchen, a head is a bathroom, a cabin is your bedroom, and a salon is your living room. Or is it saloon? Ah yes, as with all language, boat terminology is evolving. What old salts once called a saloon many newbies (like us) now refer to as a salon, whether describing the main living space on a monohull or catamaran. You might use one or the other term depending on what part of the hemisphere you live on as well. For A Sail of Two Idiots purposes, well use salon, since that was, in fact, what we called it. Ready to climb aboard? Anchors away!

Welcome to A Sail of Two Idiots, a book not necessarily for idiots. If you are reading this, it is probably because youve always wanted to sell all your stuff, move onto a boat, and sail toward paradise, but you arent sure youre smart enough. Or maybe you already own a boat but still arent sure youre smart enough. Of course you are.

Look at us. I had done some sailing on little Sunfish sailboats and the occasional Hobie Cat but had never understood the nuances of sailing and, to be honest, never planned to try. My husband, Michael, had no sailboat experience at all, nor was he concerned about this omission in his life. Our cat, Shaka, didnt know squat about boats either and, had he a choice, probably would have liked to keep it that way.