Twittering

So I write a blog about sailing. Big deal! The real action today is "live blogging" while actually sailing. Time and time again I read sailors' blogs about their upcoming plans to sail around the world/ race across the Pacific/ dump their job and sail to the Caribbean... and they always promise to "live blog" from the boat.

Most of them never follow through.

I wonder why? Maybe the technology defeats them. Or sea-sickness. Or perhaps they are having way too much fun drinking rum and singing sea-shanties and getting naked with the crew to have any time for "live blogging"?

Sad.

Because with Twitter and Facebook and iPhones and Barackberries and all that stuff, you would think it would be easy to inform your 3178 closest "friends" that you were sailing the ocean blue with your trophy wife while the aforementioned 3178 "friends" were sweating away in their cubicles worrying about whether they were going to be forced into early retirement and whether they would have have to find new ways of financing their weekend sailing habits.

Apparently it's not as easy as it sounds to be such an ass.

But sometimes I do hear from sailors while they are actually sailing. Usually it's some cryptic message like, "XYZ is definitely drifting today." And I get this image of XYZ holding the sheet in his teeth and the tiller between his legs while furiously thumping away at his Crackberry with both thumbs. No wonder such messages are usually so short. Of course if he's using Twitter to inform the world about his awesome sailing adventure then he's limited to 140 characters per message anyway. I think. What do I know? I don't Twitt.

I don't imagine that I'm going to be live blogging from my Laser any time soon. But if I could, and if I did, this is what I would have twittered about yesterday's sail.

Gorgeous day.

Sunny.

Light northish wind.

Beating up towards Barrington.

Practiced a few roll tacks.

Why am I so bad at roll tacks?

Uh oh. Wind died.

Still no wind.

Long way back to the ramp.

There's a wind line over there.

Here it comes.

Now it's from the west and still light.

Beating towards Warwick.

Hmmm. Smoke on the windward shore is going straight up.

That's not a good sign, is it?

Wind died again.

Still no wind.

Hmmm.

Anybody know the number for Boat US?

There's a fishing boat a mile or so away, over by the Bristol shore. Maybe he'll give me a tow?

I see a wind line.

Here it comes.

Time to head back to the ramp.

Woo hoo. I can sail a Laser standing up.

In 3 knots of wind.

While Twittering.

Aren't I awesome?

Uh oh. Wind died again.

Hmmm.

This is the second day it has done this. Maybe Stuart Walker could explain why.

Hmmm.

Here comes the wind.

Thank god.

I'm back at the ramp. Cancel that call for a tow. Thanks anyway.