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Jul. 28th, 2006 10:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI went out in the boat today with rather more wind than I was really comfortable with. I still didn't flip the boat over, though this was partly due to luck and only somewhat due to increased skill on the not-flipping-the-boat front. The most interesting thing about more wind than I really like is that it's a very educational state of affairs.
Everything happens faster and harder when the wind blows a bit. Putting the boat together is a bit of a challenge in more wind -- everything flaps more and the boat can't be left to sit while I dick around threading the cunningham because the wind will tip it right the hell over. Getting all the parts of the boat together and managing to get IN the boat before it leaves... that, also, is an area where I could do with some improvement in the grace department. See, a Laser, which has a sleeved sail, is the sort of a boat where you cannot raise-and-lower the sail. Once you step the mast (stick the big long pole with the sail on it into the hole on the deck of the boat where it goes), the sail is up and it stays up after that.
At least in my world, stepping the mast is a prerequisite for the following set-up activities:
-- thread the cunningham through the tack grommet, two trucker hitches, fairlead, and jam cleat
-- make loose end of cunningham into handle
-- put boom on gooseneck
-- attach the boom vang key to the boom (set very loose -- I tighten it up lwhen fully underway)
-- attach the clew hook to the clew grommet of the sail, adjust outhaul if needed
-- float boat out to thigh-deep water
-- attach rudder/tiller assembly
-- seat centerboard, push at least halfway down
-- attach traveler blocks to each other
-- hop in boat
-- gather up hiking stick/tiller and mainsheet, sheet in, and go
None of these activities is particularly difficult but they all get a little tougher when the boat's sail is flopping around with abandon. Anyway, more practice is on the agenda -- I'm getting better.
In other news, I was playing Candyland with the nephew, brother-the-younger, and Coyote (who doesn't play but manages her dad's used-up cards). At the end of a fairly long game, I went to gather up the used cards and discovered that Coyote had sorted all of brother-the-younger's cards into piles by color and made a seperate, different pile for the character cards (like Plumpy and Queen Frostine). Earlier, she'd been playing with the knockoff little-kid (big-sized) legos and had carefully used up all of the blue legos before using the green legos and then the red legos and finally the yellow ones. I'd like to be able to pretend that I am surprised by any of this, but she comes by it honestly and anyone who has ever met an almost-two toddler (she'll be two at the end of August) knows how impossible it would be to train her to do stuff like that. She just does it, on her own.
Also, on the benefits of modelling behavior for children, I would like to report success on the question of teaching the nephew to catch a frisbee. Nephew is almost five (end of September) and he plays frisbee with rather more enthusiasm than success, but we assembled a frisbee game after supper the other day and worked on his catching skillz. Brother-the-elder, who has been visiting these past two weeks, is a very good thrower-of-frisbees. This is a skill I didn't know he had, but brother-the-elder can throw a frisbee soft and level to the chest of a small boy without apparent effort and he can do it over and over for the better part of an hour. This was a critical element to the success of the frisbee project, the having of good throws. Anyway, when we started out, the boy kept trying to catch the frisbee with one hand like adults of moderate coordination do. (I am not an adult of moderate coordination.) He sucked at that. A lot. So, the adults in the frisbee project modelled two-handed (sandwich) catching of frisbees. With all the adults modelling two-handed frisbee catching (but not SAYING that he had to do it that way), he switched to two-handed frisbee catching. It was amazing to see. Also, when he switched to two-handed catching, the boy's catch percentage went from nearly zero to better-than-half, partly because the two-handed (sandwich) catch was harder to fuck up and partly because his hands were really too small for the one-handed catch (the frisbee kept bouncing out of his hand before he could close his fingers). He was thrilled about catching the frisbee, every single time he did it.
Everything happens faster and harder when the wind blows a bit. Putting the boat together is a bit of a challenge in more wind -- everything flaps more and the boat can't be left to sit while I dick around threading the cunningham because the wind will tip it right the hell over. Getting all the parts of the boat together and managing to get IN the boat before it leaves... that, also, is an area where I could do with some improvement in the grace department. See, a Laser, which has a sleeved sail, is the sort of a boat where you cannot raise-and-lower the sail. Once you step the mast (stick the big long pole with the sail on it into the hole on the deck of the boat where it goes), the sail is up and it stays up after that.
At least in my world, stepping the mast is a prerequisite for the following set-up activities:
-- thread the cunningham through the tack grommet, two trucker hitches, fairlead, and jam cleat
-- make loose end of cunningham into handle
-- put boom on gooseneck
-- attach the boom vang key to the boom (set very loose -- I tighten it up lwhen fully underway)
-- attach the clew hook to the clew grommet of the sail, adjust outhaul if needed
-- float boat out to thigh-deep water
-- attach rudder/tiller assembly
-- seat centerboard, push at least halfway down
-- attach traveler blocks to each other
-- hop in boat
-- gather up hiking stick/tiller and mainsheet, sheet in, and go
None of these activities is particularly difficult but they all get a little tougher when the boat's sail is flopping around with abandon. Anyway, more practice is on the agenda -- I'm getting better.
In other news, I was playing Candyland with the nephew, brother-the-younger, and Coyote (who doesn't play but manages her dad's used-up cards). At the end of a fairly long game, I went to gather up the used cards and discovered that Coyote had sorted all of brother-the-younger's cards into piles by color and made a seperate, different pile for the character cards (like Plumpy and Queen Frostine). Earlier, she'd been playing with the knockoff little-kid (big-sized) legos and had carefully used up all of the blue legos before using the green legos and then the red legos and finally the yellow ones. I'd like to be able to pretend that I am surprised by any of this, but she comes by it honestly and anyone who has ever met an almost-two toddler (she'll be two at the end of August) knows how impossible it would be to train her to do stuff like that. She just does it, on her own.
Also, on the benefits of modelling behavior for children, I would like to report success on the question of teaching the nephew to catch a frisbee. Nephew is almost five (end of September) and he plays frisbee with rather more enthusiasm than success, but we assembled a frisbee game after supper the other day and worked on his catching skillz. Brother-the-elder, who has been visiting these past two weeks, is a very good thrower-of-frisbees. This is a skill I didn't know he had, but brother-the-elder can throw a frisbee soft and level to the chest of a small boy without apparent effort and he can do it over and over for the better part of an hour. This was a critical element to the success of the frisbee project, the having of good throws. Anyway, when we started out, the boy kept trying to catch the frisbee with one hand like adults of moderate coordination do. (I am not an adult of moderate coordination.) He sucked at that. A lot. So, the adults in the frisbee project modelled two-handed (sandwich) catching of frisbees. With all the adults modelling two-handed frisbee catching (but not SAYING that he had to do it that way), he switched to two-handed frisbee catching. It was amazing to see. Also, when he switched to two-handed catching, the boy's catch percentage went from nearly zero to better-than-half, partly because the two-handed (sandwich) catch was harder to fuck up and partly because his hands were really too small for the one-handed catch (the frisbee kept bouncing out of his hand before he could close his fingers). He was thrilled about catching the frisbee, every single time he did it.
