Thursday, February 09, 2006

Perfect Partner

There's one of those silly "tag" games going around challenging those tagged to list 8 points that their perfect partner would have. Malaysian kayaker fh20 answered on his blog kuching kayaking with a twist I wish I had thought of first.

In any case I already have my perfect partner and it's her birthday today. She claims not to like sailing but I have several pictures to prove otherwise. There's one photo of her on my desk, tiller in hand, sun sparkling on the water behind her, with a huge smile on her face. But I have to confess all such pictures are the results of tricks I played on her.

You see my wife enjoys sitting on a sailboat if someone else does all the work. "Don't expect me to pull any of those strings!" is the usual condition she makes before she will step on to the boat. (Yes, after being around sailors and sailboats for 25 years she still says things like that.)

But if I trim the sails and steer the boat -- and make sure the boat doesn't heel more than five degrees -- she will come out for an hour or so. So the trick I play (and I can get away with it about once every five years) is to take her out for a sail in something like a Rhodes 19 on a beautiful, sunny, not too windy day and then, once out in the middle of the bay, pretend that there's some task I have to do up near the mast.

"Just hold the tiller for a second dear while I fix this." Then before she knows what has happened, I pull out my camera and take a shot of her steering the boat and laughing all over her face once she realizes she has been fooled again.

Happy birthday dear.

5 comments:

EVK4 said...

Happy Birthday Tillerwoman.

Pat said...

If I'm good and promise not to mess things up too much, my spouse might allow me on her boat. Otherwise, it's safer for me to do something really simple, such as running the committee boat.

bonnie said...

awww, that is hands-down the nicest post I've read all week. Actually it's been an insane week at work so I haven't been doing a lot of extracurricular reading, but I bet even if we'd had a week-long blizzard (ooh, speaking of which I am hoping for a nice snow paddle tomorrow, gonna try & sneak out early & be back on shore well before the nor'easter hits...snow would be cool though, definitely gonna taking the camera along!) & I'd been trapped at home I think that would still be the case. Absolutely charming! And a very happy birthday to you Mrs. T!

Francis Ho said...

An accompanying picture of Tillerwoman would have made this the 'perfect post'!

Belated Happy Birthday wishes to Mrs.T.

Carol Anne said...

It's hard to make a comment about the perfect partner, since he's right here with me this weekend, providing logisitical support for the Adams Cup effort ...

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