Tag Archives: landscape

Sailing

Am often keen on doing things I have never done before. Sailing was one of them, which I jumped onto when an amazing colleague offered a spot on a sailboat he was borrowing for a day. We set sail from Monnickendam on a chilly weekend morning.

The feeling of cutting through water, wind and the elements in an non-motor-powered craft; through the waves up and down; rocking in the ripples emanating in the wake of other boats; the feeling of danger yet with calming knowledge of fact that the boat cannot topple; sounds of silence interspersed with hubbub of water splashing against wind and itself; was oddly relaxing, meditative while being thoroughly exhausting.

I was feeling adventurous, so I carried my drone, which in hindsight, could have benefitted from preparation of a flight plan. The take-off was easy, but the landing was fraught with difficulty, leaving us with some bruises as we barely recovered the machine. It brought back vivid memories of how I lost my previous drone

As we sailed, we took turns amongst us three, handling various duties onboard such as: enjoying the sun, steering and enjoying the sun; punctured by an occasionally call for all-hands for a huddle to perform tacking or jibing manoeuvres with the sailboat.

The notion of using headwind to sail upwind often did not compute in my head. I spent significant amount of time staring at the geometries of the various connected components in contemplation. I was in awe of physics and the classical perspective, triumphing over my romantic worldview.

After a frustrating bout of boredom as we had no winds for a long time, we started up our underpowered motor to make a pit stop at Haven van Marken for lunch.

Wind as a form of fuel on a sailboat combined with calories expended in human effort resulted in momentum for the boat and contentedness for the soul, leading me to speculate an imbalanced situation for the laws of thermodynamics. I thought to myself “Take that, physics”, as we entered the haven towards the end of the day.

Bike trip to Marken

Marken is a tiny gorgeous island town, about 30 km from Amsterdam. The last time I visited that place, I along with few friends took public transportation, but didn’t reach the light house as it required walking for few kilometers and not everyone was up for it.

Having recently purchased a road bike, this time I decided to bike to it and back – a total of 60kms – alone.

Light house

Before I could reach the Lighthouse in Marken, which is well connected by dedicated cycling paths, I had to bike through lots of small towns, marshes, fields and lots of bridges over canals and the famous dykes of dutch-land.

Bike
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a bison
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