Our family is involved in a new sport. It’s a sport we, mostly I, have been watching other people do for quite a few years. I’ve read about it, watched videos about it, and dreamed about doing it.

What it is is … sailing. We bought a sailboat a few weeks ago. The deal I had been quietly waiting on for years came along and we took it … boat, trailer and motor.

It’s a 23 footer with cabin (we didn’t want to just sit out on the lake and broil) and four sails … the main, jib, Genoa and spinnaker.

The mainsail (mains’l) is, as the name implies, the one we’ll use most. The jib, a smaller sail which goes forward of the mast, has several purposes, depending on the sailing conditions at that moment.

The Genoa, sometimes referred to as the Jennie, pretty much does what the jib does, but in lighter winds. It’s bigger than the jib and extends from the bow of the boat back along the side. The spinnaker is the big, colorful sail that billows out in front of the boat when you’re sailing downwind and makes the whole thing look so wonderful.

To use the spinnaker, the captain and crew have to know what they are doing really well. We don’t … yet.

As anyone who owns or has owned a boat can tell you, nothing about it is ever simple. Our experience so far has supported that theorem.

First, we had to get it into the water, which meant towing the 40 or so miles to Lake Erie. To do that properly, the lights on the trailer have to work. They didn’t, at least not quite like we thought they should.

So one night of messing with the original setup produced a little understanding but not much improvement. Another night of buying a complete new set of lights and installing them ended with the discovery that the problem apparently was a bad ground connection. (Isn’t it always?)

A third night, intended for finishing up the project, was especially frustrating when the grounding problem discovered the night before refused to be cured. Finally decided they worked well enough for a daylight tow.

The day finally came to pull the boat up to the lake, a nerve-wracking but actually, pretty uneventful trip. But with a sailboat, you don’t just pull up to the lake and plop it in. I had studied the procedure for stepping (raising) the mast, which we had to do before putting the boat in the water. It went rather routinely. The boat floated off the trailer into the channel as it was intended to and, with enough help, I motored it up to the dock.

About a week later, Don R. of Bascom, an experienced sailor, came up with his son Jordan, to try to show Son Two and I how to sail. Trouble with Lake Erie is, as it has been for the past few years, there’s not enough of it. Great for beachfront property owners … not so good for boat owners.

We could get to the end of the channel but couldn’t get over the sandbars to get out onto the lake. No sailing that day, but Don was able to show us a lot about the sails and rigging and it was, ultimately, a productive day.

The next task, then was to find another dock on a channel which would be easier to get into and out of. We found one about a quarter mile down the shore. That left us with the problem of getting our boat there.

We had a choice of unstepping the mast and trailering it down the road or waiting for the water level to come up a few inches so we could get over the sand bars and motor down. We preferred the latter but had to wait until conditions were right.

Last Saturday it appeared that conditions would be about as right as they were likely to get for a while so we went for it.

It took some wrestling but we finally got across the sand bars and out onto the lake. Unfortunately, the rudder had come loose, as it was designed to do in very shallow water. But rather than take time to reinstall it as I should have, I decided to steer down to the new dock with the motor.

It had to be a comical sight, as the boat weaved back and forth a couple of hundred yards out from shore. But Someone apparently looks out for new sailors and fools, because I had little difficulty finding the new channel. It looked awfully narrow as the boat swung back and forth but stayed off the rocks and drove up to the dock.

So the next step is to try to get out on the lake once again. With some luck and light weather, we may get that accomplished this weekend. Both Sons One and Two are eager to be parts of this project and it should be a lot of fun. Wife is very susceptible to mal de mer but seems game to be involved as much as possible.

We’ll pass along the good experiences.