John has the patience of a saint and is actually a very good teacher. It wasn't as hard as I thought, but at the same time it was quite overwhelming. While it's a little bit like driving a car, it's the drifting and wind blowing that freaks me out a little bit. When you put a car in neutral it stays where you put it, not so with a boat. It drifts and moves and spins and wiggles. That's going to take some getting use to. The first day, we just did the basics - forward, backward, starting, stopping etc… Then Day 2 we got a little more fancy. We drove all the way up the race course to the dam. Ever since my Sandy Run Safety meeting, all I can envision is taking a shell up the course and sending them over the dam! :o) Fortunately it appears that I would have to make a concentrated effort to do that - it doesn't look like it's something that might "accidentally" happen. I practiced docking and pretending to switch out rowers into the shell with the launch. By the end of the session, I felt reasonably competent, but I'm still VERY nervous about this whole thing. I'm sure I'm not going to be doing anything fancy or tricky in my first couple of weeks, but still it's stressing me out. There is SOOOOO much that I DON'T know and I still can't help thinking that Mike C and John M are just a tad bit CRAZY going with this plan. But at the same time, there's not much choice. The weather has been so freaking cold that I don't think well get out on the water this week, so I hope I'll get a couple more days to practice before I'm put to the test.
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