dinner to die for

Caution: This post contains graphic images and descriptions of violence towards crustaceans.

Today, I almost died while preparing dinner. Well, maybe not almost, but I got a little panicked for sure. It is crabbing season, and I love crab. Mike and I got our first crab pot last year, and had a great time scoring some dinner offshore of Whidbey Island. This year, we are getting a late start. There is one month of the season left, and we've heard that the supply of male crabs, of a legal size, has really dropped off in the waters near Bellingham. Nevertheless, Mike and I rowed out to set the pot twice in Wildcat Cove near our house last week.

Today, I went to check the pot by myself. I'd brought some gloves along, so that I wouldn't be afraid of handling the crabs. But I still had this uneasy feeling as I set my inflatable raft in the water and shoved off with the oar. It was kinda windy, and our pot was kinda far out there. It didn't seem so far when we set it, and the tide was slack and there was no wind. But today there was wind, and the currents were strong.

I talked to myself on the way out. "You can do this. It's not that far. You've got some snacks in your belly and strong arms. There are people on the beach that can call for help. It's only windy past the point, so as long as you get back inside, you'll be fine. Mike knows I'm out here, and you've got a PFD on..." Turns out my intuition wasn't so far off. It was windy. I was alone. And the pot was far. The rowing was slow and difficult, I just kept pushing on, and breathing, concentrating on getting the oars in the water.

I finally reached the float, which was hard to see in the setting sun. I hauled up the pot, which had 8 or 10 crabs in it, and tucked the line under my foot to tow the pot in the water. I could see that the wind was already blowing me farther from the Cove. I got to rowing as hard as I could, but with the wind and the pot dragging, I quickly noticed that I wasn't making any progress. I stopped, arms burning and heart pounding, and pulled the pot in. I set it on the edge of the boat, hoping the crab claws weren't big enough to grab the boat material and tear a hole. I set off again, this time sitting up on the boat edge, and noticed slow but sure progress toward shore. I ducked behind Whiskey Rock to get out of the wind, and went around it to catch back up with the mouth of the cove. Once inside cove, the tide was pushing me in and I was safe. Time to figure out what to do with these flailing crustaceans.

I reached in with the gloves and grabbed the crabs, one at a time, from the back. I pulled them out, and checked their bellies. Female. Female. Female. Splash, splash, splash. The last one I checked was the largest. A male. Over a 7" wide shell. Legal to take. I felt like this one must have been a gift from God, to encourage me to be brave. Once I was back on shore, I popped him in the cooler with some water and tied the boat back onto the roof of Judy.

When I got home, I knew I needed to kill the crab that I had taken from the sea. I had heard that instead of boiling the crab alive, you could take a screwdriver, stick it in the back and pry up the top shell. The guts would come with it and then you could boil the crab just after it dies. That seemed better for some reason... I put a big pot of water on the stove and found the biggest screw driver I could in the garage. I approached the cooler, grabbed the crab, and pinned him, claws first, on the driveway. I said a quick prayer of thanks, and jammed that metal rod into the poor son of a gun. I popped him open like a soda. I wish I'd been able to be faster, but I'd never done this before. It suffered a bit, grabbing onto it's own innards before I could manage to break the thing in half, which finished it off. I rinsed it off, and took it inside.

It was strange to kill something with my own hands. I hadn't really done that before, as long as lettuce and dahlias don't count. It felt weird. I enjoyed the crab, but I had a strange feeling of adrenaline and something else that made dinner surreal. I shared my kill with the man I love, and we enjoyed some Fume Blanc and grilled zucchini along with it. I guess that's how it goes, being a omnivore.

changes

In the last two months my life has been shaken, stirred, simmered and sheared. I had a beautiful life before, and now it's been transformed into something else, beautiful and new. Walter Breuning was 114 years old when he died earlier this year in Montana. One of his tips for a long life was, "Every change is good, Embrace change." I've never been very good with change. It is something I crave and something I need to remain interested in life, but I always approach it reluctantly. When you are blessed with so much good, how can one be sure change won't bring something less good?


I started packing and moving my things in May. Mike got a job in Bellingham in April, and suddenly, things were changing in earnest. I knew change was a possibility when I accepted Mike's marriage proposal new years eve, but here came the change, gaining momentum and moving forward. I've lived in Seattle since I was 19. I've lived with Melissa since I was 19. From 1998 at UW to 2011 at Exteriorscapes, I've been following the path of landscape architecture in Seattle (minus the time I left and went to travel the globe, which was a long set of exciting and fun changes). But here I was, having committed to living in a new city and marrying a man I didn't want to be without. Change!


Melissa, Claire and I packed and packed, cleaned and patched our home of 4+ years. It was the longest I've lived anywhere since being home with my parents. Load after load, and finally we were done and we left. My single life! Working for me, weekends for me, wine or steak, whatever I wanted! It was fun, and I had great friends to share my life with. It was hard to go.

Our wedding was really great. All of the events and celebrations leading up to the big day, were very, very special to me. I've never felt so celebrated and supported. Mike and I met for some photos at the Ballard locks, and he looked so handsome. We boarded our wedding sailboat at 4pm with our families and a few friends. My sister made me the most beautiful bouquet and a charming boutonniere for Mike. We sailed, and I was nervous. I don't think I said much to anyone and my mind was traveling on the wind elsewhere. It wasn't until Mike was looking into my eyes and calmly saying that he would love me forever that I was able to really be present. We had a nice dinner afterwards and people said some great things about us. What an amazing day. We had a blast camping on Orcas the rest of the weekend and appreciated the time we had to spend with our friends and family.

Now, we are here! Bellingham. I am at home, playing housewife for the summer. I am cooking and baking, unpacking and hemming curtains. I slept 10 hours a night for 10 days. My neck seems to be working out the rest of the kinks that give me my headaches. Mike works all day, then we have dinner and say hi to the chickens together. It's a pretty simple life. Eventually I'll get a job, or start my own consulting business, but until then, I'm trying to rest and become re-inspired about what to do in this short life. What a blessing to have some space to embrace all these changes. I'll be 114 before I know it.

italia 3.0

 A few days before we went to Italy, Mike needed to move. And not just from one apartment to another, from one apartment to one 25' long boat. That meant things had to go to the dump, to the Goodwill, to garage sales, to storage and into plastic bins. Sorting and deciding, moving and cleaning. Working. And, oh yeah, getting ready for a trip. On our last rainy and stormy Sunday, we sailed the Eider across Lake Washington, dodging cloudbursts as they zipped over the lake. We moved our ship from this nice spot:

To this nice spot where Mike now lives:

 

We tied the boat up, failed to get the power to the heater working, stressed out about it, and got it fixed later. So it went with most of the things we needed to do. We tried, we failed, we stressed out about it, and succeed. Finally, we left for the airport and succeeded in making our flights, grateful for being done with the move.

Arriving in Rome was surreal. Mostly because I wasn't able to sleep on the flight, but also because Mike and I had never flown anywhere together. We had been domestic, road-tripping, van sleeping, boat sailing people up until that point. But there we were, having forgotten our Italian, waiting for the train to town. We visited everything that didn't have an entrance fee. I had a whole subconscious list of places my feet wanted to wander to. We saw my old apartment:

2006

2010

We saw Mike's old apartment too. He went to school in Rome in 2004, two years after I did. It was a lot of fun and lots of walking, which is how I remember Rome best.

Next we moseyed a cool 9 hours by 2 trains and 2 buses to Ravello, to greet my family! Heidi, Mother and Father were all there, waiting for us when we arrived. We all decided it was a bear trying to get around the Amalfi Coast by bus. Then again trying to make it by car would have been a bigger challenge! We enjoyed some of our favorite gardens, ate some delicious things and took in the huge views from way up there.

Villa Ruffalo

Their good sides.

Villa Cimbrone

Villa Cimbrone

Villa Ruffalo

While we all waited for the bus to Positano, our next spot by the sea, we discussed the confusion, attitude and general unwillingness to help that we encountered in the south of Italy. I longed for lines and signs and people who at least pretended that they were glad you were there visiting. Mike pointed out though, that if an Italian stood in a line, asked politely, made room, told you when you got to the bus stop that you asked for or sold you the thing in their shop window that you wanted, they wouldn't be Italian anymore. They would be German or English. That creative, explosive, self-centered, demanding attitude is what makes them who they are, and they don't need to change that for me.

Positano! I love the beach!

A good town to take a rest in.

Pants-less fishing lessons. A rite of passage.

Waiting in Sorrento for a boat connection. For a long time.

To Be Continued...

explorers

This last weekend was a real adventure. Sea spray on my shoes. Tangles matted in my hair. Shoals. Tightly spaced marina slips. Currents. The Locks. Sputtering engine. Crab. Holes in the dinghy. Forgotten pancake turner.

There is nothing like sailing. Especially when the sun is shining, the wind is blowing, and you are making your boat's max speed straight towards your destination across Puget Sound: Heeled over, sails trimmed all the way in and your loafers hanging over the rail while your boyfriend drives, cruising over tidal surface waves. We took off Friday and Monday, to make our way North for the longest trip so far in the 25', seaworthy, Eider.

10 hours of hard sailing Friday led us to Langley, just in time to get one of the last two slips in the harbor. We arrived with the sun directly in our eyes, blinded by the light. After a lot of shouting and steering issues, the Harbormaster guided us in to slip M5 and we hunkered down for the night, embarrassed about our docking skills. After waking up sore, tired and with a headache from the first of about 15 times that I would hit my head pretty hard on the companionway roof, we decided not to go another 10 hours up to La Conner and instead stay in the charming small harbor on Whidbey, full of nice people and things to do.

The day turned into a relaxing hunt for a large pot at the thrift store to see if we couldn't take advantage of the crabbing kit the Harbormasters were selling. One of my life goals was to catch crabs myself and eat them. We got a nice chicken drumstick and some salmon skin along with our folding pot, lines, float and bait trap. We set our traps via a rapidly deflating rowboat and set to making some chowder, in case the secret spot we were told about didn't pan out. With anticipation, we inflated the rowboat again, and went out past the marina bulkhead. Lo and behold! 4 big crabs! 3 male! They scratched the inside of the pot and lid as we thanked them for their lives and tossed them into the boiling water. Creepy. But so delicious, well I never!

A relaxing, and exciting day turned into a relaxing evening as we finished cleaning up crab guts and settled into our bunks. The next day, we headed out downwind towards Everett. It's amazing how much sediment the Snohomish river has spat out into the sound over the years. Shallow water flanked us to the port side of our boat for miles as we struggled to make out the buoys and markers and find the entrance to the marina. Our spot tied down on the calm side of the river turned out to be a perfect sunset and boat parade viewing spot and we enjoyed more delicious food and leftover crab.

I prayed pretty hard, several times on our voyage, and it is nothing short of a blessing that we had such a good, safe time. 

new world water

I have Fridays off now since I work 10 hours a day Mon-Thurs. I am looking forward to having fun on Fridays once I am over this mono, but for now I settle for extra sleep and restful activities to give me a boost after several long days of the 7:30-6. This morning I happily settled into my breakfast chair with the annual Seattle Public Utilities drinking water report. I don't know why, but I feel excited each spring when it arrives in the mail.

I read every paragraph, every table in depth. I love the concept of the water cheerfully making it's way through the rich forest duff layer in the Cedar River Watershed, maintaining a nearly pure state as it springs up and runs down into our water distribution system. I know it sounds weird, but maybe if you've ever backpacked or camped before and had to find your own water, it makes sense. You understand how important it becomes and how finding some good water is so exhilarating. If not, you can just think about the Colorado river drying up or the desalination plants popping up in Dubai, and that will press the issue for you also.

Plus, I am a fisherman again, which gives me another reason to care about clean water. Mike and I got our licenses and spent a rainy day Memorial Day weekend trolling the docks of Laurelhurst with our sailboat, fishing with lures and catching nothing. We rigged a tarp over the boom and I wore my dad's old Helly Hanson rain bibs over my down vest. It was a nice time though and a good opportunity to grab a blanket and take a little nap down below.

end of a decade

Top 10 of 2009 - The year in review, for me

10. Surviving swine flu

9. Passing my professional exams

8. Dresses with pockets

7. Sayulita, la parte dos

6. Obama

5. Week at Indianola house with family

4. Living with most fabulous roommates

3. Sailing classes and Eider

2. Both my nephews learning my name

1. Dating Michael McMasters for the last 10 months

michael rowed his boat ashore

The voyage was a success. A few tense moments involving container ship wakes and ferries came and went, but we made it. We locked, we sailed, we buoyed, we went ashore, returned to the boat and slept soundly in our berths. The Eider did a fantastic job and relaxation came easy once we arrived. I am 29 now and I have slept on a boat, and liked it.

bon birthday voyage!

I have always been into pirates and ships. Maybe because my older brother Stephen was. I collect(ed) pirate legos and we played Pirates! the computer game a lot. I didn't really care much about the fighting or the swords, although those were nice. I was into the boats, the ports and the provisions. I saw pirates and ships kind of like an Oregon Trail game on water. I loved to imagine the ships coming into the harbor, safe from their trip or loading up with supplies about to head out to find some treasure or rescue a friend from other pirates.


Well, here is my big chance. After spending the summer sailing around in the inland waters, Mike and I are going to guide our trusty sailboat, Eider, through the Ballard Locks and into Puget Sound! I am planning provisions and supplies, charting the course and gathering tide and bridge raising information. Our destination: Blake Island State Park. It's terribly exciting. We've watched videos on how to get through the locks and I need to reference my text books to remind myself about boat lighting after dark.

Here is my list of provisions so far:

• 1 barell (10 gallons) of fresh water water so I can run the little sink that up until now we only used to keep stuff from sliding around.
• 2 crab dinners (crab from pike place, potato salad, white wine)
• 2 portions dessert
• 1 unit of coffee and cream
• 2 units of OJ
• 2 breakfast pastries
• 4 snacks/lunches easy to eat with one hand
• Fenders, dock lines, locking lines, anchor
• 2 books, 2 sets of pillows and blankets
• Flashlights, emergency lights
• 1 barell of gasoline, just in case there is no wind

Here's a photo of Eider, the boat, out of the water a few years ago for paint. And also a photo of an Eider, the duck for which the boat was named before Mike bought her.

part-time

A song by Flight of the Conchords called Part-Time Model keeps running through my head. It goes like this:

Looking 'round the room

I can tell that you

Are the most beautiful girl

In the room

And when you're on the street

Depending on the street

I bet that you are definitely

In the top three

Good looking girls on the street

You're so beautiful

You could be a part-time model

But you'd probably still have
to keep your normal job

I keep thinking of this because my hours at work have been reduced to 20 hours a week. Or so. Projects have just dried up, ended or been reduced in scope. This schedule may go for one month, maybe longer. No one knows what will happen. Everyone at work and most people I tell say, "Oh no! Sorry! Are you going to be okay?" I say, "I'll be more than okay, I'll be living a dream come true..." There are three of us so far who are supposed to reduce our hours. The deal is that we are supposed to reduce our time, but should come in anyway if some more work comes in. We need to be flexible. It sounded like we would know the week before or so if we needed to come in, instead of be out.

This morning at 8:00, right about when I was thinking in my sleep that I may get up and start to work on the many plans and commitments that I had made for this most glorious unpaid day off, the phone rang and it was my boss. I needed to come in. I fear that part-time may end up being unpaid on-call shifts. Like I should just go ahead, get up, and put my work clothes on in the mornings. Maybe sit by the back door with my bag, and just read a magazine for 9 hours, in case something comes up. Maybe next week I will actually be able to reduce my hours.

Here were/are my initial plans for this epic opportunity to rest, catch up, complete, mend, wash and prepare:

1. Alter one skirt and one swimsuit top, sew on two buttons
2. Clean out my belongings, really, really thoroughly
3. Windsurf at the sailing club
4. Visit parents and nephews
5. Disassemble old box spring for recycling
6. Weed garden
7. Back-up computer
8. Be nicer and more helpful to friends and family
9. Read my entire giant sailing text book
10. Sand and oil all the rest of the wood trim on The Boat

The Boat, I should explain, only belongs to me in spirit. But I like to do a little work on it and sail it. It actually belongs to a man named Mike that I have been dating for nearly 6 months. He's a dream. He is tall, kind, obscenely generous, hilarious, smart, bearded and many people's favorite person. And he recently acquired a boat. How can you top that?

break me off a piece

I live for summer, I always have and I have said it before. The warm, unstructured, unproductive, gap in time has always seemed most like heaven to me. I still mourn the loss each year as the students get out of class and I must keep going to work. It's as if I never notice the lack of real seasons until summer. Not climatic seasons, but human seasons. The acknowledgment that humans are mostly cyclical beings but that maybe we need a break on a larger scale sometimes. Not just a scheduled weekly rest, but a break that is an actual break. A season longer than 7 days.

My last real break was the year 2006. That went well. Creativity, adventure and real tingly life came pouring back to me after I made the break. Now, I have no breaks in sight except the tiny ones that I can fit within the monotony. Going a different way. Skipping my class at the gym. Eating early or late. These things make a difference to me, a person who like most, grew up with breaks, every summer.

In addition to tiny breaks in the cycle, I do my best to fit breaks into the weekly rest period, the weekends. So far, the weather has been good to us here in the pacific northwest. I have sailed and hiked and visited family in the yard and at the lake. I've camped, surfed, walked and swam a little too. BBQ, gardening and friends provide some excitement.

It's not that I am sad or disappointed, it's that I am doing my best within the limiting circumstances and having a good time at it. At work, things are slowing down, so I am scheduling more days off. Breaks. Maybe they will slow down to the point of a real break - the layoff. It's hard to tell. The fact that we are just settling into the real part of summer now leaves me with nothing but optimism that maybe this season, there can be some kind of real break if only a few days at a time.

raise the canvas

Helms alee! I am back in sailing class this spring. After a 4 month break due to, well, winter, I am back in the cockpit again. This time I have raised the stakes a little. Instead of dinghy sailing, which I love, I am taking a try with keelboats. I negotiated my way into the Keelboat Novice class, which I do not have the proper ratings to be eligible for. We meet for 6 weeks on Mondays, from 6pm-10pm or later depending on how far out we get. This photo is of a Catalina 25, which is one of the boats that I am learning on.





















We have 8 people in the class, and we divide into two groups on two different boats. So far we spent one week getting oriented to the boats and practicing docking under motor, and the next week putting sails up and practicing reefing. We took turns sailing on Lake Washington for a few hours. Then it got dark and I got cold and started making mistakes and getting disoriented. Then it was time to go in.

My group consists of 3 guys and a male instructor. Jason is from Texas. I knew he was from Texas before he told me because he always offered to carry things for me and was giving me the right of way through doors. Bryce is from Seattle. He wears sporty hiking pants, a soft shell jacket and a beard. Peter is a kid I knew from my novice dinghy class last spring that I sailed the double handed boats with since we seemed to be figuring it out at the same rate. My instructor has been either Matt or Kregg, guys I know already from sailing club parties and other classes. All of them are nice and have been fine to learn with so far.We have a giant textbook called "The Annapolis Guide to Seamanship." While it's difficult for me to learn sailing from a book, it's still good to get introduced to concepts and terminology.

I'm not sure where this class will take me. If I get a keelboat novice rating, I can take the keelboats out in Lake Washington and Lake Union. I bet it takes more than being in the class to get that rating though, so we'll see how it goes. The thought of being in charge of a boat that big and taking people out who can't help me know what to do, is terrifying. We'll see. Maybe after all 6 weeks I will feel more confident, especially on summer days with no storms brewing.

ready about

I got a new cookie cutter. It's a sailboat shape. It took me a week to get through the three steps of mixing, rolling and frosting, but I did it. Here are the cookies, racing. The two in front have their spinnaker sails flying, which is why they are winning.

A year ago I didn't even know what a spinnaker was. Tomorrow I am sailing in a little race. I am finally figuring out how to keep one's life exciting in the absence of extended vacations or global adventures. Maybe someday the sailing, surfing, windsurfing, snowshoeing and backpacking will be enough and I won't feel this groan in my soul anymore that wants to pack up and get moving. Hopefully someday.

a different sort of sailing

New experience for the week: Duck Dodge. Lake Union's legendary sailboat race/frat party was all I hoped it could be and more. I hopped down to the UW sailing club after work on Tuesday. Several folks were already rigging boats and adjusting their tube tops in preparation for the big event. I ended up on a boat with a bunch of students, mostly girls, a couple dudes and one cool older guy who knew how to sail the boat. We motored out to the lake, towing another one of the club's boats that didn't have a working engine, also full of students and some alumni. We reached the race a little late, and missed our start. Instead of going around the marker and starting properly, we just cut over and joined in someplace in the middle.

This is the nature of the race. No one really tries to win, except a few fancy boats. Everyone else just tries to not run into each other and make at least a little progress to the end. For the winner: a gold duck sticker to slap onto your boom or mast. For the biggest fool (crashing, sinking, flying sails backwards, etc.): a black duck sticker, also to be displayed proudly on your vessel. To the outside, and to me someone barely on the inside, it looks like chaos on the water. Like dozens of insects scurrying about, trying to escape. After the race, which we may or may not have finished, we sailed around a bit, watching the sun set, until the raft up started.

All the boats roped together in two long lines, with the race committee boat in the middle. I tied the line on the front of our bow, to the bow of the next boat. 10 minutes later, as the boats began to drift apart, we realized that the knot I didn't tie, didn't really work very well. We sorted out the boat, and prepared to make the long trek, climbing over the side by side boats to the middle. Drinking, dancing, flirting and revelry ensued for the next hour until the horn blew. This means 10 minutes until the raft up will break up and you need to be back on your boat, or hope that some stranger will give you a ride home from wherever they dock. We had to swing by the center boat later to pick up a few folks who didn't make it back. And a girl named Katie apparently didn't make it back at all. Motoring back to the UW, I helped pack up a few sails and then sat down to enjoy the lights of the city, shining off the water all around me. It had been an out of the ordinary experience from the people to the disco ball. I find that my outlook on life is significantly improved by such efforts. I hope to get back out there a few weeks from now for toga night.

a short tour

Looking down at my legs the other day, I realized that I had no real bruises. Only dark areas where bruises used to be. I thought, "This is unusual. Maybe I have been more careful and graceful lately. For once I look like a grown up from the knees down." After further consideration and examination of my activities, I realized that it is not because I have been more careful, but that I haven't been doing anything interesting. No surfing, no sailing, no climbing on people's roofs for a few weeks. And somehow on my last backpacking trip, I didn't fall onto any sticks or trip and land on a boulder.

So I took to the sea on Sunday and jumped into a laser sailboat. I barely remembered how to put the thing together or how to run it, it had been so long. I spent about an hour, floating along slowly in a windless trance. Then the wind picked up and I was shooting back and forth across the bay. I got the thing tilted way over, hanging my backside out. A sudden gust of wind (or perhaps poor steering) caught my sail and I felt it pitch. I tried to let the sail out and steer back off the wind, but it was too late (and I maybe steered into the wind instead - can't remember) and I had to bail. I jumped off toward the sail as far out as I could to avoid all the metal pieces on the boat, and actually enjoyed the cool water for a moment before turning the boat into the wind and climbing up on the centerboard to get it righted. It was very exciting, my first high speed capsize. And I came away with several new bruises as I climbed aboard. Back to normal!

This is how you do it.

anniversaries

Yesterday was the 55th anniversary of the first ascent of Mt. Everest. It was also the 1st anniversary of my descent, face first, into the street and the last time I rode my bike. I can't even believe how annoying that little accident ended up being. My whole perspective on safe has changed and I can't seem to let the whole thing go. I usually imagine some vivid version of my own tragic death everyday. It's like TV that turns itself on in my head, but only lasts a few seconds. Cranes fall on me, trucks tip over as they take corners or I get caught in the middle of a gunfight in my neighborhood. Hopefully, with my heightened sense of danger, my reflexes and observatory powers will actually keep me from getting hurt the next time? At least on the slightly positive side, I do have some replacement teeth (even if I also envision those falling out of my mouth regularly), my jaw is hurting while I eat a little less each month that goes by and no one seems to notice my perpetually fat, scarred lip.

Luckily, there are so many good things keeping me busy lately, I don't have time to dwell on the danger and aftermath. Long weekends, long drives, handsome men, a freshly arranged patio, hundreds of seeds sprouting in my garden, soccer matches, visiting family, my dad's retirement, baby showers, BBQs, catamaran lessons, new recipes and old friends. Then there were the three days I was sick this week and couldn't eat, but that's just a blip. The season is in full swing and I love it.

well, blow me down

"And this here...this is a reef knot. It's used for tying two pieces of line together. It is very strong as you can see...but then comes easily untied," I said while grinning to my captive audience on the back of our friend's yacht while cruising Lake Union. I'm pretty sure that will be the last time anyone asks me to tie some knots for them.

I moved to my big finale. The bowline knot. My most complicated and impressive knot. "You see, just go around like this and back down, and there you have it, a perfect fixed loop, useful for attaching the head of the sail to the halyard, tying climbers to ropes or tying anything down, really." Just before I was about to take a bow and collect my praises, Blake comes out of the cabin, grabs my line and says, "This is a bowline? It's not a bowline."

"What?", I replied sharply, glancing quickly at the audience to gauge their reaction. "What do you know about it?"

"Yeah, that's not a bowline. I was an eagle scout (possibly not true). Here, let me show you." Blake proceeded to tie a perfect bowline, the very first time with twice my speed and flare. I ignored the snickering from the audience as I forced Blake to watch me re-tie the knot 4 times before I got it right. Around the other tree, the other way before coming back through the loop. Dang it!

I broke a key rule. Don't Get Cocky. I always say that. Well, not as much as I say 'Safety First', but probably second to that. I get out in the sailboats a few times, and suddenly I think I'm Popeye the sailor man. I have a lot to learn. Fortunately, I am sailing both days this weekend so I'll have plenty of opportunity to practice.

sailing with the kids

"I'm sailing! I'm sailing. Everybody, We're going sailing! Down by the WAC up to the point. Sailing!" This should be said the way Will Ferrell says it in the movie Old School when his character Frank is yelling about streaking. I was yelling this as I pulled farther away from the dock, skippering my own Laser. I couldn't believe that the thing actually worked! I mean, the wind was pushing me and I was steering and sailing!

This phenomenal experience was made possible by the Washington Yacht Club. I joined the club, signed up for a lesson, and in two full days at the club last weekend, I am rated on two different boats to sail whenever I want to!

Learning was great. I ate it up. Practiced tying knots Saturday night to pass my tests Sunday. I sailed with a group of college kids, all trying out their own hands on deck (sidenote, I am so glad to be a little older with a little life experience and a lot more confidence than my former co-ed self! Those kids had nothing on an old lady like me). We all learned and had a great time doing it.


It's an entirely different experience holding the tiller in your own hands. Sailing on someone else's big boat is great, but there is nothing like being in charge to really figure out what's going on. I know how to rig and sail a one-person Laser and a two-person Flying Junior, seen in these photos. I intend to get down there on Friday after work to keep it all fresh in my mind. Having the boats is like having a yard full of new toys. I can go down whenever I want to and play. The best thing about this whole deal is that I feel good about going out, trying something new, meeting new people and having fun - all by myself. Maybe I'll be a real adult someday after all.