Sorry for Neglecting You

I am back in the land of work, busy ridding Great Bend, KS of appendixes, gallbladders and uteruses (or uterii). This is what I did for 20 yrs. before I moved onboard a boat. And no it is not just like riding a freakin' bike. Anyway, I'm ready for a little comic relief too, so when I quit having nightmares about dropping the baby during a C-section I'll be back blogging.

"Skeeter" Gets Swatted By Mother Nature

This picture was taken early in the day. The grandkid now swears he's never going sailing again! The morning of "Skeeter's maiden voyage started out benign enough, as a matter of fact it was downright boring. We'd raise the sails get a few good puffs of wind then the wind would disappear and we'd start the motor, then the wind would pick up and we'd raise the sails, then the wind would...Oh hell, you know the routine. We tucked into a few little crannies and let the grandkid swim and grinned like idiots when we grounded the boat and pushed her off by ourselves.

Pookah hailed us on the VHF and welcomed us to High Country sailing while we lamented the lack of Mother Nature's natural propulsion source that day.

"Just wait," replied Pookah, a little ominously I thought.

We didn't have to wait long.

Pretty soon a frisky little wind started to build and we raised the sails again and Skeeter was galloping along. Then...right when we were coming about...

BAM!

The wind decided it didn't want us to come about and whipped the lines out of our hands and into the water. The boom slammed and the grandkid screamed, or maybe that was me. Skeeter tried to rid itself of its contents but we held on tight

Boats aren't supposed to do that! Bad Boat! My old boat never did that! My old boat displaced 39,000 pounds and that was without all of our crap on it.

Just like the early part of the day, the wind died, we started the engine and we limped back to the mooring field where of course the wind picked back up as we tried to pick up our mooring.

Okay, Mother Nature had put us firmly back in our place. So what if we'd sailed a big sailboat on a big ocean, she could still kick our ass if she wanted too.

I wanted to echo the grandkid's declaration to never go sailing again, but I'd said it too many times before.