Rob, Annabella and Laura

3 Nautical miles

It was hot today... very hot. Here is the Heat Index statistics from http://www.cyprusmeteo.com/index.html for today. It shows that while we were out on the water it felt like 48.9 Celcius (in the shade) and we were in the sun. I still enjoyed it though.

Actually it was hot all day. Here is Cyprus Meteo graph for the last 24 hours:

We got to the club about 10:30 and we left about 2pm. What is slightly strange is that it actually got hotter around 5pm.

When we arrived I found that kids had removed the bungs from the the stern of Galini, which meant that last time I had sailed we had partially filled the buoyancy tank with water. Not a good idea. I looked round for something to block it up with, but since it was so calm thought I could get away with it for an hour or so. Wayfarers will float with the cockpit filled with water and the rear buoyancy tank also filled with water... but only just. It turned out that an hour or so was about all I could get away with.

Rob is a friend of a friend and I took him and his two daughters out for a sail. First time sailing for all of them.

Beautiful calm sea and blazing sun.

The helm moves left to go right and right to go left. Takes a bit of getting used to when someone is used to driving a car.

Because the sea was so calm I let Rob tack without first demonstrating. My mistake. We went round in a circle!

Didn't do his self confidence any good when Laura did it pretty perfectly after I had demonstrated.

Oh well... by the end he was helming fine.

However when Laura took over, the worried Dad was watching every move...

yep... she's doing fine.

What was good was that because the sea was so calm I could let Annabella have a go at helming too.

Too quick for me it was time to head back to the club. However I could feel the water in the buoyancy sloshing about (yes, I know its called the 'free surface effect' that makes the boat less easy to steer with a partially filled tank but this is a blog for normal people, well... relatively normal people) and decided we should not push it too much more.

The wind? Well, when we started it was very low (Bft 2) and was just creeping up to Bft 3 when we finished, which was making it more exciting for the girls. Sorry, without bungs I don't want to risk too much. (Thanks to Windfinder for the info.)