Wednesday 21 April 2010

Single handed sailing...

What with the approaching sailing season, I have been pondering  about single handed sailing and all things relevant.  Not the type of sailing that Bernard Moitessier, Joshua Slocum, Blondie Hasler or more recentlty Ellen MacArthur achieved. But on a smaller scale.  I  am talking Dinghies here.

I have a Hobie 405, but since my daughter has taken off to Uni, along with a major portion of the monthly disposable income, it looks like I have a deficiency in the crew department, to the tune of one.
Now this lack of crew along with my new deficiency in the working arm department has led me to think about downsizing the whole dinghy fleet.
Granted its not much of a fleet, but needs must...

So if I lose the 2 man dinghy and replace it with a Laser, perhaps I can get some physio out on the waters od Donegal.
So this got me to thinking about how I could handle sailing a laser with only one working arm.
I am sure others have done it before me.  Surely this is not ground breaking territory.
A quick search on "Google for Single Handed Sailing" return 12,100 results. This looks good I thought.
Top of the list is Wikipedia,  (how do they do that) and they inform me that me my search term is in fact reffering to sailing alone.  A completely different affair altogether

What I require is information about sailing with only one working hand.
A modified search on Google for "One Armed Sailing" returns stories about Akio Yonago the one armed Japanese circumnavigator but little in the way of advice for how to sail a laser for example.

So if anyone has any ideas, then let me know.

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