1 LiveBloggin' the ICW: FORCED! Forced I say, to go sailing...

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

FORCED! Forced I say, to go sailing...

It was terrible - I had planned to loaf all afternoon in the 80° temperatures when an email from my editor at SAIL Magazine alerted me to the fact that we needed a photo of Gypsy Wind under sail. This was for an article I had written on sewing your own mainsail from a Sailrite kit which will be published shortly.
'The art department is in an uproar, there's no lead photo for the article. We need a photo of your boat under sail..." according to the email.
Well, what's a guy to do when duty calls but...go sailing?
Now I had to unhook the electric, take off the dinghy, untie the lines, get my good friend Al and his wife Joyce to follow me out in their Island Packet to take pictures - well, you get the idea. A perfect afternoon I had planned to share with a bottle of spiced rum and a book, shot all to heck. Life just isn't fair sometimes.
So off we went. The winds were about 10 knots out of the south, and the Indian River was flat and calm. In the near distance, another dozen sailors were mucking about, no doubt also victims of heartless editors...
Surely you can see just how hard all this was - hauling on those lines, watching those wind shifts, paying attention to the depthsounder....watching all the stuff I hadn't secured below tumble to the sole while I heeled, then slide across the floor as I came about...
Anyhow, as you can see, life is tough on a sailboat in Florida in the winter....sure could use some crew, especially as I get closer and closer to the Bahamas and those beautiful white, sandy beaches and gorgeous turquoise water...of course, it being so cold in the north, even cold in Texas, just getting yourself dug out of all that snow to get to the airport could be a challenge. I understand, I really do!

Being serious again, since I'm this late in the season, I'm thinking of attending the Miami Boat Show  - if you're planning on being there yourself, let me know and we'll get together. If you aren't planning on being there - why not? It's a fun show.
And just so you'll know what you're missing, here's what a Miami sunset looks like...