2009 sailing goal: the reveal

Since I was such a miserable failure at achieving last year's sailing goal, I've decided to employ my favorite 'strategy for success' for this season:

Lower expectations = higher achievement.

During my flight to Portland earlier this week, I read in Cruising World magazine that "more catamarans are being sold in the U.S. and chartered in the Caribbean than ever before." I'm not sure that I could explain, even at gunpoint, why catamarans have never been all that interesting to me... but they haven't. At all. Maybe I'm a monohull snob, or maybe I just have no sailing ambition whatsoever. Oh gosh, maybe I've lost my sailing mojo.

Actually, the best sailing story I've ever heard -- as told by someone very dear to me -- involved a Hobie-16, Pamlico Sound in NC, 25 knots of wind, and an island picnic. And one of the most accomplished racers in my club is a catamaran sailor/racer. Last summer, when I fell in love with a neighborhood cat and wanted to see if anyone owned him, I bought a pink collar with a name tag that said "Hobie" and my phone number. Unfortunately, we ended up putting the collar on another cow-cat that looked just like the one I loved (...shoulda known when the poor kitty panicked and peed when I picked him up), and it turned out that the real Hobie lived at the house across the street from me and answered to the name 'Henri' (pronounced in a French sort of way.) The unfriendly imposter Hobie is apparently still roaming around Columbus, Ohio, wearing a hot pink collar with my phone number on the tag. Oddly enough, he never came back to visit after the very stressful collar-installation experience...

Anyway... one of my sailing-blogging buddies and his gorgeous French wife -- dyed in the wool monohull sailors, I thought -- recently checked out a giant trimaran on the Columbia River in Portland. And finally, the guy at our marina who gets my award for being the most crazy and annoying and yelling-at-people-oriented sails a Corsair 28. I guess my point is that so many people are having a blast (and/or yelling at people) on a catamaran these days... and I've never taken the opportunity to understand what all the fuss is about.

Well, that is about to change, because my sailing goal for 2009 is this:

Sail a catamaran.

And by "sail," I mean "move briskly across the water, powered only by the wind, while on a catamaran"... or "sit on a catamaran parked on the beach and think about sailing"... or even "snap a self-portrait of oneself, smiling, with a catamaran in the background."

I updated the 'Sailing Goals' section at the right side of my blog. When (not if!) I achieve this goal, I may feel ambitious enough to set an additional goal for 2009, such as "buy cute new sailing shoes... like those cornflower blue mary jane trekkers from the landsend.com site, in a size 9 [cough-birthdaypresent-cough]."

I really think I can do this. Wait - what kind of attitude is that? I know I can do this. It's a brand new season full of amazing possibilities and high achievement! I can achieve this season's goal. And I will.