Al's Great Escape

A friend at the marina has retired, and I guess we don't have to be concerned about what he'll be doing with his time, as he jumped on a boat to Bermuda recently. Not sure where he is now, but what a great thing to do. Someday I would like to do this, but with my luck, halfway there, the crew would announce they were all gay, and would play "In the Navy" repeatedly, forcing me to jump overboard. It could happen. Here's a video of Al's great adventure. And, just for fun.. Muppets. We need more Muppets!

Annapolis Boat Show

What a great two weekends we had. We got to see our daughter in Indiana, and had a great time visiting. Big Ten Football was a plus, but mainly it was a nice time having the four of us together again. Kelly was there too! After the family gathering, we took time for ourselves, and headed to Annapolis. It's a great town, as many of you know, and we enjoy walking around town, and seeing all the new and insanely priced sailboats. How do people afford these things? Anyhow, the food was good, though the veggies were scarce. Felt bad eating that crab. He was good though. The beer was good, and we spent some quality time in McGarveys(?) People watching is pretty cool there. Lots of folks from everywhere. Saw Don Street, but didn't get to say hello. Missed Suzanne Giesemann, see Libertysails blog to the right. Saw some friends from the home port, and heard some others were there, but never bumped into them. Chic, I know you were there. Kind of cool recognizing some of the folks seen in magazines. They look taller in print. We roamed the tents, and managed to find a mattress we liked. Even got to lay on it. I always feel awkward laying on the bed in front of everyone. I should have curled up in a fetal position, and stuck my thumb in my mouth, but I didn't have any hand sanitizer. We also found a "Mack Pack" to make it easier to put away the mainsail, before I kill myself climbing the mast to get the cover on. The pack will stay on the boom, the sail will fall into it, and I will zipper it up. Neat. Hope it works. I'm tired of my dock mates sipping wine, while I climb like a monkey all over the deck trying to stow the main. Kind of looks like this: I took a look at some of the LED lighting at the show, and Imtra had the nicest. I would like to replace all the lights with LED before we shove off. Deb knows I'm a watt watcher, and battery monitor, so to keep her sane, I should upgrade the lighting. Speaking of battery's, does everyone remove their batts from the boat in the winter? I left mine on board, and just maintained a charge all winter, but I'm hearing that removal and storage in a warm dry place is better. I have 2 8D batts, and I would have to have emergency hernia surgery if I lifted those out. So unless it's crucial that I get those out, I think I'll save my groin instead. I'll have to take pictures of the frame I assembled on top of the boat for the cover. People are calling it an ark. I figured that if the economy continues to slide, and it all falls down, I still have the boat, and can live on it. So I better build a good cover to keep out the elements. Hmm, water could be a problem at 10 below. Better re-think the boat as a home at latitude 43. Well, I better get ready for bed. Got to build those emission controls for the new Chevy Camaro coming soon. Buy one, save an engineer. They are rated at 25 MPG! When I got out of junior college, I was on my way to Boston to finish school, and party my ass off in between Bruins games, and classes, but I never made it past Rochester. Worked out great, but if I could do it again, I would go south to to Annapolis. Great town. Now if they could just get a hockey team.

Politics

I try to keep this blog just about sailing, but sometimes the political season creates some great stuff, like these videos, which are one sided for sure, but funny, and poignant. Remember the Waaz Up commercials for Bud? Here's a remake... Remember this guy?

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Boilermakers

We hit the road again, for Indiana to visit the little engineer. We did manage to tailgate too :) That trip gets longer every time. One thing we did notice along the way, was the traffic volume was very low. A bad sign for our economy. The highway between Columbus, and Indianapolis is usually clogged with trucks, but this year I could relax, and cruise right through. Good for me, not for the economy. We will make ONE more trip to West Lafayette, and that's for graduation. Yee Ha. I will miss the tailgating, as we've met some great students, and parents over the years. Enough to know that this red state, blue state crap, as far as I can tell, is just that. We're all Americans. A liberal New Yorker can have a beer with a conservative Midwesterner, and laugh and have a good time. We all want the same thing, peace, prosperity, and freedom. We have differences, but so what. If we were all the same, we wouldn't be America.

Will Purdue ever win another game this year? Yikes. Maybe Nic is a jinx, and needs to graduate, for the sake of the team.

The trip would have been a bit shorter, if we didn't have to wait for "Bladder Boy" all the time.

Last sail?

Well, the tradition continues. We had a nice sail. No speed records broken, and the wind did calm down to about 5 knots in the end, but it was a flat water day with plenty of sunshine. A few complained that it wasn't good sailing at all, but I disagree. What is good sailing? High wind, wild ride? Moderate breeze, flat water? The thing about sailing is, you never know what you'll get. Suppose in soccer, or hockey, you score a goal every other time you have the ball, or puck. Wouldn't that take away the thrill of scoring a goal? If every day was a perfect sail, we'd get bored pretty quickly, and eventually find something else to occupy our time with. Part of the fun is finding, discovering that perfect sail. The thrill, and challenge of handling the boat in different, or changing conditions is what makes sailing such a great sport. You never know what you'll get. So, if you're out there in 5 knots, or 25 knots, enjoy it. It's better than sitting in your cubicle! We spied another center cockpit boat out near the bluffs, and I decided to tack away and check it out. Not sure of the make, but the nice folks on board were snapping photos of our boat, while we were getting shots of theirs. More of us should do this, so we can have photos of our boats under sail. We yelled out "Latitude43.com", and now we hope they connect, and we can exchange photos. Smile! We may try to get another sail in this next weekend. Trying to avoid the inevitable. I'm not ready yet, and neither is Deb. We'll keep an eye on the weather, and maybe, just maybe we'll get another "perfect sail" in.