When I was asked by James to join the the crew of ION on a sailboat race to Peachland I had to laugh because I had never been on a sailboat before, but I had watched a very funny video on the KYC web site that was called "What Not To Do On Your Boat" and was glad to help him with his little sailboat.

At noon on race day. I was introduced to Frank who was joining us after jumping ship from his regular boat named "Skebangu", which in Swahili apparently means: "Trust me- I am a Doctor". After an endless discussion of what they thought the various parts of the boat were for, ION was taken out of the harbour and we went through a bunch of strange manoeuvres called tacking which I had previously thought to have something to do with laying carpets.

While there were lots of other boats on the lake, only three joined us at the start line: "Skebangu", "Zoom2" and a much bigger one named "Predator". All the other boats on the lake were busy playing pirates with the kids for the Variety Boat for Hope Charity which just had to be more fun than tacking.

It was a good thing that I knew how to tell the time as I had to keep telling James what time it was even though the race hadn’t even started yet, but eventually all four boats were sort of going in the same direction toward the bridge and I figured that the race had begun even though I was sure I could swim faster than that.

Apparently I was the only one who knew that we should be pointing the boat at the opening in the new bridge since for some reason or another James and Frank kept insisting that we go the long way around by doing these tacking things. What to my surprise, the other boats were doing even more tacking things, and we eventually got to the bridge opening ahead of them. Then the outboard motor was started up and we got going really fast, which was clearly what we should have done in the first place.

After we went under the new bridge, we didn’t do as many of the tacking things, which was good, because the outboard motor had died and we had to use the sails again. A couple of the other boats decided to sail over near Casa Loma Resort where they must have gone for a swim or something, because we didn’t see much of them after that.

Eventually it was decided that the sail that needed all the tacking things wasn’t working anymore, and I had to start raising and lowering this big metal pole that was tied to one end of something called a spinnaker which made the boat go even slower than before. I got lots of exercise moving this pole up and down, and had hardly any time left over to pour drinks for the guys and make sure they had enough to eat.

Just about the time we were getting close to Peachland, the big boat called "Predator" must have run out of food and drink and started up their motor, because they started to catch up to us. Darned if we were going to share our meagre supplies so Frank wisely insisted we stay away from them by going out into the middle of the lake and let them go by. Then just before finishing the race at Peachland I had to put something called "fenders" on the side of the boat which apparently makes it easier to park without bending things as much.

When all the boats were parked without doing too much damage to each other, we toasted our good fortune for surviving the voyage and then walked over to the Gasthaus restaurant where we all had to put on these funny hats and the biggest bibs I had ever seen in my life. The restaurant was so busy that the cook insisted that we share just one large plate called a Medi Evil Pheast which was actually very tasty. The waitress must have felt real sorry for us for having such pokey boats, as she gave everyone free schnapps, apple fritters and ice cream.

At this point I learned that even though we didn’t get to Peachland first, it turns out that we somehow came in first anyway, which had something to do with the size of the motor and the number of people on the boat. This was just too confusing and I let the guys take the boat back to Kelowna on their own since I had done most of the work so far just getting it here and saw no need to help them any further.

Next year maybe I will get my own boat and show them how to get there a lot quicker.

Myrtle Appleknicker