Spring has definitely arrived for most of the sailing bloggers in the northern hemisphere. Forget about the New Mexicans such as Pat and Carol Anne who apparently sail in a desert all winter. And of course if you want to live in a hurricane zone like David you can enjoy warm weather sailing all year too. But for some sailors further north the sailing season is just beginning.
Dan in Massachusetts is salivating over his new trimaran and can't wait to launch her ... one weekend soon. Meanwhile the Skip in Toronto is checking out his new spinnaker and working on the boat.
Tim Coleman who incidentally has the blog name I wish I had thought of first, All Day I Dream About Sailing, managed to find some time on Monday to fit in a 45 minutes sail on the sea. And H2uho took a few friends out for a weekend of sailing on San Francisco Bay and almost didn't make it back against the adverse tides under the Golden Gate Bridge.
Edward of EVK4 Bloglet, also from the left coast, took his 5-year-old daughter Camille out for a sail. Or was she taking him for a sail? (Warning: Parental Advisory - many photos of seriously cute kid.) But dude you have to find some solution for those fenders. You need to work harder on looking like a real sailor.
And as for this next blog ... I just don't believe it. Yes it's true. Final proof that spring is really here.
Ant Clay at Soulsailor, normally known for his down-to-earth sailing stories in brummy vernacular, such as his delicious accounts of "bacon sarnies" for breakfast before racing, his anatomically vivid descriptions of his sailing technique "bot our fat arses were over the side for a few seconds", and his colorful weather reports such as "....Decent Breeze down the lake, not raining and almost sunny...swell up too wow, must have been a couple of centemeteres, shifts only through 90 degrees and hardly any fisherman or local-twats throwing stones" was positively poetic this week, describing his feelings about sailing.
Thats one of the beauties of sailing, you go out race, cruise, practice you have a good, bad or average day.. but when you get back to the shore you look back with a smile... a smile that you made a stupid mistake, a smile that you had a great beat or a smile that you had the most fantastic surf or plane ever... but you smile, your relaxed, your happy...Well said, Ant.
What I really love about this sailing thing, and actually its been far far too long since I actually thought about it..its the scenery, the landscape, nature..fresh air.. The shape of the clouds, the gusts across the water, the sound and feeling of the wind, waves curling, translucancy of the water the sound sit makes slapping the hull; the fact that wherever you sail, theres always and I mean always a beuty about the location...
Spring has most definitely sprung. Go for a sail this weekend.
5 comments:
Going down to Annapolis Monday. I will be picking up Pretty Gee on Wednesday or Thursday...about a week later than I had wanted. I hope to get her in the water and to her marina slip on Friday. Some things are just worth the wait.
Solved the sailing look issue.
Spring has sprung in North Florida too....90 degrees this weekend. The boats are out!
Dwayne
Paddled this weekend. Sailing next weekend. Y'know, for a middle-class white-collar cubicle dweller, I feel mighty rich sometimes.
Soloed my wife's boat for the first time while she was out practicing spinnaker with her crew on a J-24, though fast-building gusty winds made the return to the marina "interesting" or "a learning expeirence". Warm weather (low 80s) made my other job of "crew water boy" more important. Tried sailing against the fleet leader but wound up a good 5% behind him at the finish -- I had the advantage of crew weight (he was solo), but had a missing batten, mostly green crew, and an outboard motor partly dragging in the water (another story), plus this was only about the third time I'd ever helmed the boat (vs. about the 1,000th time for Larry!).
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