This summer, I went sailing the way I used to when I was still a teenager: At Ratzeburger Segelschule. And because I had such a great time, I have to share pictures today. They are to do with water, so not too far off topic for this blog ;-)

A beautiful summer and lots of kids learning how to sail. In recent years, there have been a couple of cool ideas implemented that were not around ages ago when I practically lived there all summer: For example, in order to learn to paddle and steer a sailing boat (before actually learning how to sail it), kids get to collect some 50 plastic duckies out of the lake:

And then, they get to sail. Seeing this particular sail always makes me super happy: It used to belong to my family’s boat! Lots of happy memories connected with this yellow sail.

Therefore, most pictures I took this year involve this sail. Also, the color contrast is nicest.

When there is more wind, things get a little more stressful for the sailing instructors.

But sometimes, when there are not so many kids around and it isn’t too windy, I get to sail in an optimist, too.

But usually there are so many kids sailing at the same time that it’s better to be on a dinghy and shout at them, because most of the time they aren’t all nicely sailing together, but are shooting away in different directions.

Another recent invention is the crowning of “Dödelkönig” – the king of Dödel. A Dödel is someone who is clumsily doing stupid things that he or she should really know better. We now keep a running list of Dödel-points, and at the end of the week, the person who has collected the most points (plus who we think can handle it, not everybody would like to become the center of attention that way) gets crowned, and then “abandoned” on one of the pillars of the old pier. All the other kids then throw in the rubber duckies and the Dödelkönig has to collect them all with a net while swimming from one to the other.

The particular week I was there, we had two Dödelkönige.

And then afterwards, we do the baptism. Since the kids have now learned how to sail, they get welcomed into the community of sailors by having whipped cream put on their head and being thrown into the lake.

A very satisfying feeling for all the sailing instructors to throw in those kids! How far they fly is usually a good proxy for how much they got on our nerves during the week…

And this is what it looks like after all the kids have gone home, when everybody starts to relax and wind down again.

Beautiful!

So if you are looking to learn how to sail (or just go sailing in the nicest place there is): Check out Ratzeburger Segelschule!