Surfing Pun of the Day

He also surfs who only stands and wades.

Puffy Pants and Pulp Fiction

The votes are in. It's clear that you the readers overwhelmingly feel that the winner of our Love and Sailing group writing project should be Setting the Record Straight or Capt. Puffy Pants Eats Crow. I wholeheartedly concur. So, if Capt. Puffy Pants would like to email me his mailing address I will send him the prize.

I was very pleased that this entry won because, although the good captain has only been writing his blog Boat De Jour for a couple of months, I believe that he is setting a totally new direction in sailing blogs. Boat De Jour is, I suggest, the first truly "postmodern" sailing blog.

Let me first confess that, until five minutes ago, I had no idea what that term "postmodern" meant. But after extensive research using The Google and The Wikipedia I now consider myself an expert on the subject.

Actually The Wikipedia is not very enlightening on what "postmodern" really means. It just has a lot of twaddle such as saying that postmodernism is "a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions." Say what again?

However, I did discover that the 1994 Quentin Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction is considered by many critics as a "prime example of a postmodern film". Aaaah, now I get it. Tillerwoman and I watched Pulp Fiction for the first time a couple of weeks ago (we are a bit behind in catching up with recent movies) and right away I saw the similarity between Pulp Fiction and Setting the Record Straight or Capt. Puffy Pants Eats Crow and why I loved so much the postmodern elements in both of them.

Pulp Fiction has a lot of swearing and killing people. I don't think that that makes it postmodern. And, in any case, Setting the Record Straight or Capt. Puffy Pants Eats Crow doesn't have any killing people in it at all. On the other hand there is a bit of mildly foul language such as "bleep you".

Pulp Fiction has John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis, but I don't think that this is why it is postmodern. Likewise John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis don't appear in Setting the Record Straight or Capt. Puffy Pants Eats Crow. Nor does Uma Thurman. (Which is a shame because I do have a bit of a thing for Uma Thurman.)

No. What I discovered from my minutes of research on The Google into postmodernism is that Pulp Fiction is considered postmodern because of the picture's "self-reflexivity, unconventional structure, and extensive use of homage and pastiche". Now do you see why I saw the similarity with Setting the Record Straight or Capt. Puffy Pants Eats Crow?

Just like Pulp Fiction, Setting the Record Straight or Capt. Puffy Pants Eats Crow has an unconventional structure. It is immediately apparent that there is a missing section from the story. The narrative abruptly jumps from Capt. Puffy taking the helm to the whole crew of the vessel swimming around in the lake. Classic postmodernism! (Can postmodernism be classic?) Thankfully the good captain posted the missing scenes a few days later in The Missing Transcripts of "Setting the Record Straight or Capt. Puffy Pants Eats Crow".

And how about that for self-reflexivity? Referring in his blog to the blog as if it were the record of some kind of court proceedings? "Missing Transcripts"! Delicious postmodernism.

But it's the "homage" that really makes this story truly postmodern. (I think that if you are in the know about postmodernism you are supposed to pronounce "homage" with a French accent.) Pulp Fiction is full of homages to other movies and television programs. I'm sure I only "got" 10% of them. Similarly Setting the Record Straight or Capt. Puffy Pants Eats Crow is full of homages to films and TV. The blog's name Boat De Jour is clearly an homage to the 1967 Buñuel film Belle de jour; the name Puffy Pants itself must be a reference to the famous Puffy Shirt episode of Seinfeld; and the character Honey Bunny is clearly based on the character of the same name played by Amanda Plummer in Pulp Fiction!!! How spooky is that possum?

I could go on but I leave it to the reader to discover all the vast riches of postmodern elements in Setting the Record Straight or Capt. Puffy Pants Eats Crow the worthy winner of our grand prize. The only thing that could have made it even better for me is if it had included a dance scene with Uma Thurman.

Fat Virgin

I'm back... Tillerwoman and I have just returned from a wonderful 10 day vacation at the Bitter End Yacht Club on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands.

Bitter End Yacht Club is not a yacht club. It is an all-inclusive water sports resort. But it does have some of the style and atmosphere associated with the better class of yacht clubs.

There is a lot to do at BEYC. There is sailing on dinghies and catamarans and keelboats. There is windsurfing and kiteboarding. There is kayaking. There is diving and snorkeling. There are blue-water excursions. There is an amazing variety of food. There is steel band music. There are painkillers. There is rum.

Virgin Gorda, as I am sure you know, means "fat virgin". It is not a fat virgin. It is an island. It was named Virgin Gorda by Columbus on his second voyage because he thought the shape of the island as seen from the sea looked like a fat virgin. It really doesn't. But I guess when you've been two months at sea with only hairy smelly male sailors for company then you start having fantasies about fat virgins and pretty much anything looks like a fat virgin, even a green hilly island.

It was our fourth visit to BEYC. We went a couple of times in the mid-90s with our then teenage sons. We all had a blast. Then Tillerwoman and I went by ourselves in 2001. I really can't recall why we haven't been back sooner. Maybe after the rum has totally worn off I will remember.

I am probably going to bore you over the next few days with some posts about our vacation at Bitter End. Other people's vacations are boring, I know. So come back after Christmas if you don't want to read any boring posts about my vacation. But some of the posts may surprise you. Some may be funny. Some may be rude. (I've discovered that rude posts tend to generate the most comments.) Some of the posts may even be about sailing. Some will probably be about rum.

So the story starts on Friday evening a couple of weeks ago as I sit on the deck of our rustic cottage at the north end of BEYC, sipping rum (of course) and looking across Eustatia Reef at Necker Island, the whole frigging island owned by some other Brit about my age called Richard Branson. Sir Richard is apparently busy this week somewhere in the world launching his new venture to sell rides in space to rich idiots. I am sitting on a veranda sipping rum and enjoying the view of Sir Richard's island and wondering what the next day, our first full day at Bitter End, will bring? Will there be mimosas for breakfast? Will there be sailing? Will there be rum?

18°30'17" N 64°21'19" W

Normal service will be resumed whenever...

Love and Sailing... and the winner is...

Our Love and Sailing group writing project closed yesterday. Thanks to everyone who contributed. As there is a very valuable prize at stake, there will be a three stage process for selecting the winner.

1. After an exhaustive and searching evaluation process, I have selected eight finalists A,B,D,N,O,P,S and Z who are eligible for the prize. See list below.
   
   
2. You, my expert advisers, (i.e. anyone who has stumbled upon this post) are invited to read all of the finalists' entries and make comments on which ones you prefer. While you are doing this, the beautiful Tillerwoman and I will be enjoying a well-deserved (well she deserves it anyway) break in the Caribbean. There will be rum. There will be sun. There will be wind. There will be sailing. There will be more rum.
   
   
3. When we return (whenever that will be) and have sobered up, I will peruse your comments and select the winner of the grand prize, a totally free, completely original, only-read-once (well twice actually), first trade paperback edition of the blockbuster smash hit "love and sailing" book of the century the Motion of the Ocean, 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers, and a Woman's Search for the Meaning of Wife by the world-famous love and sailing author Janna Cawrse Esarey!!! The book isn't signed by the author but it will be signed by the slightly famous Tillerman, once named as the writer of the "best sailing blog on the planet"!!!!! Decision of the judges (well judge actually) is final.
   

Grand Finalists

A. Danger Will Robinson! "Sailing has been a central pillar of our life together. I feel very lucky that we share this same passion and we have shared this since the start. It helped form the bond in the beginning, fixed the cracks later and now is creating a new foundation."

B. The Things We Do For Love "Her trust in me was implicit, that trust might have been a burden, but it wasn't, I just grew to love her all the more."

D. It's A Rock! "I learned that, when you least suspect it, your wife may very well be right."

N. Sailing - The Best Thing That Ever Happened "One day she told me that one of the main reasons she was attracted to me was that I was a sailor."

O. Who Do You Trust? "Learning these lessons and failing to learn them has resulted in some of the best times my wife and I have shared together. And in some of the worst."

P. Setting the Record Straight or Capt. Puffy Pants Eats Crow "For some reason my wife thinks this whole “story” is quite amusing."

S. Sailing Reminds Me Why it's Good to Be an Old Married Couple "Sailing brings out the arguing, which will later be followed by the apologizing and the making-up. Oh, the making-up."

Z. Love on the water, Physical, Mental, Emotional "Love and Sailing can bind a couple together better than a land bound couple’s bowling on Tues interest, or bingo on Friday."


Other very much appreciated and worthy entries that are not unfortunately considered quite good enough too be eligible for the grand prize. Better luck next time.

Atlantic Rally for Cruisers in which Cleo got shagged by the skipper.

A spat "He slipped a hand inside her blouse and she realized she wasn’t wearing a bra." Yikes!

The "Love and Sailing" non post by some English bloke who says it never happened.

Valentine's Day by some romantic fellow who bought his sailor wife a present that was much better than chocolate or flowers.

Tillerwoman by some pathetic character who apparently can't persuade his own wife to sail with him.

Con La Vela He Encontrado El Amor Verdadero! by some California dude who thinks you might need help in finding a date.

Thank you again for all your excellent posts on this topic and for sharing your stories about how love and sailing interact in your lives. Did I miss anybody?

And now it's over to you. Which of the finalists' stories do you like best? Who should win the prize? I really want to hear what you think.

Tillerwoman

When I was a young man I had this fantasy.

I saw myself sailing with my beautiful bride... perhaps crewing a racing dinghy together on our home waters in England, and cruising the Mediterranean and the Caribbean on bareboat charters with our young sons for vacations.

I thought it would probably be a good step for us to learn to sail first. So we dumped our young sons on their grandparents for a couple of weeks and I took my beautiful bride off to Minorca Sailing in the Med.

It was warm. It was sunny. We took sailing lessons together in a little dinghy called a 350. Some afternoons she relaxed by the pool while I played on the 350 on my own. I made lots of mistakes. I learned a lot from my mistakes. At the end of the vacation my beautiful bride and I won the beginners' race in the 350s. We had tasted the rare pleasure of winning a sailboat race. (I did not yet know how rare it would be.) We enjoyed our prize, a bottle of champagne, at the post-race barbecue. Life was good. I was one step nearer to fulfilling my fantasy. Before returning to the UK I had my first sail in a Laser. It sent chills down my spine. That was almost 30 years ago and I still remember it.

We went home. We discovered that my parents had taught our youngest son (12 months old) to walk while we were away. Bastards! We missed his first steps. Aaah, but it would all be worth it for my sailing fantasy.

Then my beautiful bride announced that she had enjoyed our trip to Minorca but, on reflection, she had decided that she didn't like sailing. It was not for her. Had I shouted at her too much during that race we won? Not more than usual, she told me. She just "didn't know what she was doing" when we were sailing. She kept thinking about "all that water under us". It just wasn't her thing.

OK...

So I bought a Laser. I learned to sail it. I bought a wetsuit. I started racing year round on the local gravel pit. We went back to Minorca Sailing a couple of years later but this time I sailed Lasers and my beautiful bride painted pictures of boats and palm trees. I won a Laser race. One of my beautiful bride's paintings of boats and palm trees still hangs in our bathroom today.

We moved to Rutland and joined Rutland SC and I sailed my Laser on Rutland Water. My sons were old enough to learn to sail, so I bought them an Optimist. My sons took sailing lessons. I bought them a second Optimist. Every weekend my sons and I went sailing, and my beautiful bride came to the sailing club and happily acted as trolley dolly and brought us our lunches and generally looked after us. She said she didn't want to sail herself; she didn't like sailing.

We moved to America and lived near a lake in New Jersey. There was a Sunfish fleet on the lake. My sons and I raced Sunfish every Sunday in the summers. My beautiful bride sat on the beach and looked beautiful. She told us that she didn't like sailing.

But one year, after our sons had left home for college, she said she would like to try and learn to sail the Sunfish. I was pretty experienced by then at teaching people of all ages to sail Sunfish. I gave her a few lessons. She was progressing well. One Saturday morning she woke up and announced, "I would like to try a capsize drill this weekend." Great! We sailed my Sunfish out to the middle of our little lake. I gently capsized the boat. She swam around to the daggerboard and did a perfect capsize recovery. Then she decided once again that she didn't like sailing. It just wasn't her thing.

I've tried everything I could think of. I suggested that she go on one of those Womyn Only sailing courses where "nobody shouts". She wasn't interested. I suggested that we buy a bigger boat, one that doesn't tip over like a dinghy. She wasn't interested. She just doesn't like sailing.

However, from time to time when we are on vacation she will come sailing with me. We sailed a Hobie cat in St. Lucia and nearly sank one off the Florida Keys. We sailed Rhode 19's once together in Maine and more than once in the BVI. My beautiful bride's usual opening gambit is, "I'll come on the boat if I don't have to do anything." But once we are afloat I say, "Hold this rope for a minute," or, "Just hang on to the tiller while I get my camera out." There is a photo in a frame on my desk of her holding a tiller with sparkling Caribbean waters behind her and a huge smile on her face. Is she smiling because she enjoys sailing? Or is she laughing because once again I have tricked her into having a photo taken that makes it look as if she enjoys sailing?

On rare occasions she will even race. She has crewed for me and for friends we have made on vacation. She has won every race she has ever crewed in. She is the perfect crew. Yet she is adamant that she doesn't like sailing.

So I have adapted my sailing to cope with the inevitable fact that I am married to a wonderful woman who only has one real fault: she doesn't like sailing.

So I sail my Laser on my own. We travel together all over the world to satisfy my need for a Laser racing fix. Australia. Europe. South America. Caribbean. She goes for long walks and sits on the beach and looks beautiful and sips drinks with little umbrellas in, and is perfectly happy. When I come off the water she brings me my dolly - and a beer if I'm lucky - so I'm perfectly happy too.

So I sail my Laser on my own. It suits me. I'm not a great team player anyway. There's no me in team. If my beautiful bride and I had sailed together I expect we would have had constant disagreements brought on by the stress of dealing with all the minor crises that sailing a boat inevitably creates. It's better this way. I go sailing. I come home to her afterwards. We are both perfectly happy with the arrangement.

Building a successful marriage is not about following the wild fantasy of one partner. It is about learning and understanding each other's likes and dislikes, and forging a relationship that plays to each other's strengths and weaknesses. My wife has many interests and skills; I can only marvel at the many fields in which she is so talented. On the other hand, I am fanatical about sailing but am not especially good at it.

Every morning, when I wake up, my first thought is how fortunate I am to have married this amazing woman beside me and how lucky I am that she is still with me. My second thought is to look out of the bedroom window at the wind on the waters of my bay and wonder if today will be a good day for sailing.

Marriage is not about a destination. It's about savoring every moment of the voyage. It's about give and take, ebb and flow. Or as Janna said... it's all about the motion of the ocean.

Life is good.

---

This post is my own contribution to our group writing project Love and Sailing.

Use It Or Lose It

On Saturday I ran in a 5k road race which, in keeping with the season, was named Trot Off Your Turkey. In my case it would have been more accurately titled Trot Off Your Turkey, Apple Pie, Cranberry Upside-Down Cake, Take-Away Chinese, Fish and Chips, and Way Too Much Alcohol. We did have a good time at Thanksgiving.

I used to run 5k and 10k races quite regularly. When I looked back in my diaries (see anal-retentive) I discovered that I hadn't run a 5k since 2001. Wow. That's a long time. In the meantime I took a year off running with a knee injury in 2002 and 2003, conceived the crazy idea that I could run marathons in 2004, actually ran marathons in 2005, 2006 and 2007, did a lot of sailing in 2008, and didn't do much of anything in 2009. How the years fly by when you're having fun.

So I wasn't all that surprised to discover that my 5k time is now slower than it was in 2001. A lot slower. About 2 minutes per mile slower. But it was fun. And I think I will start running 5k and 10k and 5 mile races again.

Use it or lose it.

---

On Sunday I sailed my Laser in the frostbite fleet in Newport. It was sunny. It was windy enough to hike and plane and ride some waves downwind.

I used to do frostbite racing quite regularly. When I looked back in my diaries (see anal-retentive) I discovered that I hadn't sailed a frostbite series since the winter of 2005/6. Wow. That's a long time. In the meantime I took off a year in 2006/7 because we were moving house, in 2007/8 I went to Australia for the Laser Masters Worlds, and in the winter of 2008/9 I didn't do much of anything. How the years fly by when you're having fun.

So I wasn't all that surprised to discover that I totally suck at the kind of large fleet, short course racing that is typical of frostbiting. My starts, my mark-roundings, my boat-handling, my tactics, my layline judgment, my decision-making all totally sucked. On the other hand I did stay upright, I did have some good battles with other bottom-half-of-fleeters, and it was fun. I think I will start frostbiting again every weekend I can.

Use it or lose it.

---

However... the beautiful Tillerwoman and I are off to the Caribbean later this week. There will be sun. There will be rum. There will be sailing. There will be kayaking. There will be swimming and snorkeling. There may even be windsurfing and stand up paddle boarding. I'll probably do a bit of running. I will definitely do some Laser racing.

Use it or lose it.

Today I am quite tired.

Love and Sailing: Two More Posts Today

The entries for our Love and Sailing group writing project keep rolling in...

It's always good to receive a submission from a relatively new blogger, and this one's a real doozy. Setting the Record Straight or Capt. Puffy Pants Eats Crow is a tale about one of those "learning experiences" which seems to get more embellished every time it is told. For some reason Captain Puffy does gloss over the details of exactly what went wrong after he took the helm, so I would love to hear Honey Bunny's side of the story too.

And The Skipper of the Starboard Racing Vessel tell us that "Sailing Reminds Me Why it's Good to Be an Old Married Couple". She tells us that "sailing brings out the arguing, which will later be followed by the apologizing and the making-up. Oh, the making-up." I think all married couples would agree with her on that one. We also learn that there is something irresistible to her about "the smell of sun-warmed skin, sunscreen, and gel coat, on a handsome sailor." Hmmm. I never knew the the smell of gel coat on a man was an aphrodisiac. I must try it some time.

Keep them coming. The competition remains open until Tuesday. Don't forget we have a fantastic awesome stupendous prize for the best story this month. Full details on how to participate - including the prize - at Love and Sailing.

Love and Sailing: Another Three Posts

Three more stories for our Love and Sailing group writing project...

Norm has contributed Sailing - The Best Thing That Ever Happened, a touching tale about how his romance and sailing relationship with Joan progressed from Thistle racing in Connecticut - "one day she told me that one of the main reasons she was attracted to me was that I was a sailor"; to cruising the San Juan Islands in a C&C 35 with their daughters; to Star racing with Joan on Budd Inlet - "for me it was as much about being on the water sailing with her as it was racing"; to buying a Catalina 36 - "we made a vow that the boat was just for the two of us and we would never sail it without the other." I think this is the first time Norm has participated in one of our group writing project. I hope it's not the last.

The Things We Do For Love is the love story of the Bursledon Blogger and Erica, of how she agreed to sail across the Atlantic and back with him even though she had never sailed more than 50 miles before, and of how their love blossomed on the voyage.

And Pat tells the tale of what he bought his wife for Valentine's Day, and in the comments she says the gift was Much Better than Chocolate or Flowers.

There's still time for you to write a post on this theme. Perhaps one of these three stories or the ones here and here will inspire you. Full details of how to participate - including the amazing prize that the best entry will win - at Love and Sailing.

Love and Sailing: Three More Entries

When I challenged you to write about Love and Sailing for this month's group writing project, I suppose I should have realized that this would be a tough one for some of you. There could be all sorts of reasons why you might not rush to tell the world about "how your love life and your sailing life interact."

Captain JP teased us for a while with a post about "skinny dipping and comfy bunks" and something else that was "rather steamy" but ultimately The "Love and Sailing" non post is about his choice not to reveal anything about this side of his life. That's OK. I respect his decision.

But then the following day he posted a tale of a couple sailing together in the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers... with a surprise twist in the end. It's fiction... I think.

Adam Turinas seems to have had no qualms about taking on the challenge that I originally set with an excellent account of how he and his wife Alice share a passion for sailing, and the roles that sailing has played in their relationship: "It helped form the bond in the beginning, fixed the cracks later and now is creating a new foundation." Check it out at Danger Will Robinson!

(I did warn you that I would rename your posts if you all chose "Love and Sailing" as the titles.)

There's still plenty of time for you to write a post on this theme. What can you do with it? Will you tell us something about your real life like Adam did? Or make up a fictional tale? Or tell us about someone you know? Maybe you will invent some whole new way to treat the topic? Full details of how to participate - including the amazing prize that the best entry will win - at Love and Sailing.