29 January 2006

Life imitates Sailing

Nothing is really going on in my sailing life. It seems like a situation that many people are facing due to either too much or too little weather; some of the people that read this blog come by 3-4 times a day hoping for a glimmer of sailing news. I do the same thing.

This reminds me of the time we were battling through the top of the Bermuda Azores high, trying to get to the downhill run above 40N. For three days we drifted, occasionally throwing a pretzel in the water for a high-spirited low-speed race. There is nothing more depressing than having to drop the sails and drift aimlessly for hours when the wind dies completely.

After three days of this, we finally got some excitement. I was on watch, scanning the water, actually going a couple of knots, but having to really work the sail trim to keep it going, when I saw something in the water. Not just something, a clorox bottle!!! 99.999% of the world would have looked at a clorox bottle in the water and just been pissed that somebody littered. Not the intrepid crew of Zorra, this was contact with civilization. I called "all hands on deck" and everybody raced up to see the glory of the bottle. I got a picture of it that I'll try to dig up.

Nobody on that boat was pissed that I took up valuable off-watch sleeping hours to look at a clorox bottle. Likewise, I'll bet no sailor who is reading this blog gets pissed off at a boring story about a plastic jug wasting a valuable 42 seconds of their online, no-chance-at-sailing-in-the-middle-of-winter life. If I'm wrong, comment button below.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

We need to go sailing, really.

Anonymous said...

Show us the bottle!!!! ;)

Richard said...

A Clorox bottle? Maybe if it were a plastic bottle half full of rum, but not Clorox.

EVK4 said...

Richard, I think you have it backwards....after 14 days at sea, if I see a bottle of rum, I lock the companionway, tack, grab the bottle, hide it in my seaboots, unlock the companionway, and act like nothing happened.

A clorox bottle?!? all hands on deck!

Anonymous said...

I'll second anonymous. We really, really need to go sailing.