Sailing on the wind @Urunga

Sailing, with the wind full and fast is probably the closest feeling to flying I've ever had. Each sport out there gives you a distinct sensation when you're doing it just right. Canoeing its peaceful; a gliding sensation that you feel as you balance and in the muscles as they bunch for another stroke, keeping rhythm and time.

Yet sailing is different. Leaning out over the water, under your torso there is air and spray and wind in your hair. You're sailing not just through the water but over it, flying so near to able to reach out to the ripples below you. It's a rush of speed and freedom because you know what it is that makes you move like that because its in your ears, loud and cool. There are no fumes or petrol. No chug-chugging or spluttering behind you. Its just wind and water. And you're part of it.

Two weeks ago I signed up for a sailing course with the Urunga Sail Training Club and today we had our first lesson. I was intensely excited as you might imagine from my description of sailing above but walking inside surprisingly I wasn't anxious like I might have expected. It was the third time I'd been to the clubhouse and there is something about it that sets me at ease.

When I'd stepped into the clubhouse two weeks ago I felt an instant connection. Maybe it was the ancient plaster board, thick with layered paint and patched together into geometrics. Or perhaps it was the brick fireplace and the proportions of floor, rafters, windows and doors. It was only when we got "the tour" that my eyes had picked up on the flag, green for scouts and above it the familiar portraits of Baden Powell, Our Queen Elizabeth and another more damaged.

It became more obvious even without the explanation, "Yeah this used to be the Urunga Sea Scout Hall." The structure and its paraphernalia had a commonness with all scout halls, probably across the country. Certainly it reminded me of a down-sized copy of my own group's hall up at Coffs. Surveying the tiny kitchen behind the window, the random old furniture and the murals across the walls it was like meeting the siblings of an old friend.

So here was this new hobby I had come to explore and though I wasn't sure about all the booms, vangs and curled up white material I felt an intimate knowledge of the place already.

Outside too was a tangled memory of camping, canoeing, swimming and late night games of spotlight. The Russell buildings I found today felt so much smaller like a doll's house of the originals, a brick boat house facing down the ramp to the river and the square hall above the skewed concrete dock. As scouts, when we were still allowed to stay in them, I remember camping clustered on the grassy patches between them. The Russell buildings had been like a second Station Creek; a place for water activities and exploring the river during the day and the vista of the golf course for nocturnal wide games.

As we gazed out over the river to view our sailing conditions today I glimpsed to my left around the boat shed the fig swinging low over the high tide where I'd climbed like a wily monkey. To my left in front of the veranda I could almost still see a Venturer chilling in his hammock while exuberant scouts chased rabbits.

Now in my head I know the river pretty well too, having swum my way across its heaving currents between the island and the shore several times on scout camps. But I have a feeling that it will be another thing when I am trying to steer a sailboat along it. I've learnt some of that sailing lingo today as we tightened the d-shackles to the boats up to set them up on land today. Then we capsized them to learn how to un-capsize and I tried to wrap my head around the way to adjust the mainsail, jib and steering in order to properly harness this invisible force we were dealing with.

The others may still be anxious about the sailing part, and though I don't really get all those details I'm not. I'm keen and can't wait to get out on the water next week!