Thursday, February 04, 2010

Stars align...
1) Yesterday, I decided once and for all this blog should be about sailing.
2) Yesterday, I directed Anna to the blog in a pathetic bid for readers. Anna was surprised to see that I began it in 2002. That's before blogging was cool, right? Just a minute, though - is blogging cool? I guess it is okay if you comment, but I'm afraid of what you are going to say. I should add that the number of posts per year must be some sort of bottom-of-the-barrel record. That's something.
3) Yesterday, I promised to donate my monstrous old metal filing cabinet to the local Cultural Coalition. You think this is unrelated, but wait. That involved cleaning it out. It would be nice to simply dump it all into a sack and make a burnt offering to the gods of accumulation, but I suspect there may be land deeds in it and, what's this?, yes, an important 1968 Sunday School diploma. I could take it to church meetings to add authenticity to myself when foisting crackpot ideas on our unimpressed vestry. But I digress. In the sifting, I found this photo.
It is of my sailor brother and said Anna in 2002, and was taken just after the sailing adventure of which I wrote at the time. Look at how they survived unscathed. Smiling. Unafraid.
Maybe sailing isn't so bad.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Although I consistently purchase books with titles like Death at Sea and Terror on the Waves as Christmas presents for my husband, each one only makes him more keen to try his hand at the tiller of something bigger than his 11-ft homemade skiff.
Time for a new tack, as the sailors say.
I booked us a blustery end-of-January weekend trip to downtown Chicago. The Strictly Sail Boat Show. Discount passes for early booking, cheap train ticket, discounted room a few snowy blocks away. If that didn't take the wind out of his sails...
But no. The city was fantastic, and so was the show. Why, there were seminars every 45 minutes on Sailing Basics, Cold Water Survival, Line Splicing, Keeping Your Eggs Fresh (I think that one was called The Essential Galley), Topless Sports Moms (that one was Sailing in Northern Italy), and my favourite, Two Royal Marines Sail the Northwest Passage and Run Out of Fresh Water. Boy, though, that last one did nothing to dissuade our man. The stars in his eyes shone bright. We may soon be living in the high arctic in this:
Must find a copy of The Franklin Expedition. For all the good it will do.