Windsurfing

Bow, Stern, Port and Starboard! Mast, Rig, Sail and Boom! Today morning reminded me of my first semester of engineering, way back in 1998 :) Gosh! That was like a zillion years ago, but it was a pleasant feeling to get back to those concepts once again. It was purely on a whim that I decided to opt for "Naval Architecture" as my engineering subject back then, but now I know why my intuition worked the way it did. Simply because I love the waters. I take to water like a fish, that is the kind of natural affinity I have towards this element of nature. And I feel absolutely ecstatic, on top of the world when I am in/near the waters. Like a true Cancerian.

So today out of yet another whim, I decided to get up early in the morning and learn windsurfing.

The first step in windsurfing (after the brief theory session) is to learn how to balance yourself on the surfboard, initially without the sail attached. I was a pretty quick learner. I did not have even a wee bit of trouble balancing on the board. It took less than five minutes of observing my balancing act on the board for the instructor to realize that I can skip lessons 1 and 2 and go a few steps ahead. Not that I want to brag about myself, but then they were quite impressed by my sailing skills for a first timer :) Apparently most people take 1-2 hours of practice to just get the balance right, something I did in 1-2 minutes.

It was such a beautiful experience. I took out the board with the sail into the water and within seconds, without even realizing I had drifted far away into the sea, all on my own. Standing on the surfboard, holding the boom and letting the wind and the waves take me wherever they wanted to. Absolute bliss. Words are insufficient to express how exhilarated I felt in the middle of the sea, surfing away into the deep blue waters, all by myself. All I could see around me was the endless mighty ocean, and a couple of fellow surfers. All I could hear was the whooshing wind and the rippling waves. I could just sail on like this forever.

Two hours. Time just flew by without even realizing. Two hours of my life spent in heaven. 

The ocean along the Girgaon-Chowpatty shore was quite calm actually, I would really love to learn surfing in rough seas. Of course this was just the beginning, there is so much more to do. Mastering windsurfing is just a mini-step, water skiing, paragliding are in line for the future. Miles to go before I sleep, seriously.