Why do you sail?
At the risk of offending some of the great people who frequent this site, for which I apolgize beforehand, to me the answer to "how slow do you sail" is directly related to the question "why do you sail?" I started sailing because a lot of my friends were into racing, and needed crew. Read that, "ballast." We went "fast", I guess, and it was "exciting", another word for downright terrifying sometimes, won some races, lost more, and were really macho about all of it. Sure we can fly the spinnaker, its only blowing like crazy. Arr, me mateys! After a few races of serving as counterweight on the weather rail, and muscle on the winches, I developed an interest in the actual sailing part of sailing. Another set of friends were casual sailers. They had things like wives who wanted to go, too, and sons and daughters who liked being out on the water. After a few evenings of not being heeled over at 30 plus degrees, getting soaked, able to actually sit and drink a beverage and listen to some music, and talk, or not, and look around, listen to the burble, watch the gulls, as opposed to being screamed at to move faster, turn harder, turn the damned radio down (actually had one "skipper" throw a radio overboard), I decided I sail for the pleasure of the quiet, the lack of stress, the chance to actually get away without really getting away. Sure, it is fun to mess around with sail trim to see if you can get another half knot out of her, but you don't have to be flying around with your hair on fire to do that. And VERY FEW ladies I have ever sailed with, including my first mate wife, like being heeled over and crashing thru the seas. So, I sail as slow as it goes, because it is the sailng, the being out there, that matters to me. I have nothing to prove. My beer and snacks taste much better when drifting along on my boat than they do when sitting on my deck. Don't really like to run, too hot in the summer. Don't want to plot a course I have to stick to, too much tacking, etc. I am more a "which way is the wind blowing, let's go that way and back" kind of sailor! Wuss, I know. But I can feel the stress of the week slide away with every half mile that slips under the keel, at 1 knot or 6.
