Okay, so I’m told I have to start thinking about where I want to do my residency. Can anyone blame me that I want to go someplace with a LARGE body of water? (Like I would have *any* time to sail, working 36 hr shifts on the floor, anyway…) There is a seminar coming up soon. Some “flight surgeon” is going to talk about his experiences. How come they don’t have “boat surgeons”? Or do they? There *was* that slightly bald doctor on “The Love Boat”….

CREW FINDER WEBPAGE

I’m always looking for someone to sail with me. That’s kind of hard, being in the Midwest, as people assume there’s no significant sailing going on in landlocked states. Here’s a nice little webpage where you can post to either find crew, or be crew.

Crew Finder Message Board

GAS PRICES

I remember last fall that gas was about $1.39/gallon where I live. There was a day when it was $1.18/gallon, but that was just ONE day. The next day it went back to $1.30-something/gallon. Today, gas is around $1.79/gallon where I live. I say, scrap the roads. Let’s build a series of canals and bridges and sail everywhere we go. Only malaria or bacterial meningitis might then become an epidemic due to lots of standing water around cities. ‘Wonder why Venice, Italy doesn’t have that problem. . .

I found this lovely article about a live-aboard sexagenarian (in their 60′s-70′s) couple. Here I quote a few amusing tidbits from it.

SAILING INTO RETIREMENT
By William Parkinson
from http://www.thirdage.com/news/archive/980117-01.html

Retirement.
That condo, now that the children are gone — near a golf course,
perhaps — naturally with supermarkets and pharmacies nearby. Ah, the common
concept of the “golden years.”

Any sailor worth his or her salt would toss that vision out with the bilge water.
Tomorrow means ocean crossings, new ports to visit, a constant battle with the
elements and work, work, work. It means keeping that home afloat, shipshape,
ready for any contingency. It also means new friends, a passport to a wider world
and sunsets truly unimaginable.

Such a choice may not be “sensible,” according to society’s retirement mantras,
but for those who choose the sea, “eccentricity is, thank God, still legal until
fairly advanced old age,” say British sailors and authors Bill and Laurel Cooper.

Handbook for Ancient Mariners
They’ve dedicated their book, Sail into the Sunset: A Handbook for ‘Ancient Mariners’
(Adlard Coles Nautical of London, distributed in the U.S. by Sheridan House
Inc., $27.50) to the world’s “sailing octogenarians, in the hope that we will live
to join them,” and stress the sailor’s gospel that “old sailors seldom die; they
are too busy sailing.”

Happiness at Sea
Would-be ancient mariners concerned that a boat might be too confining for adequate
exercise can cast such notions to leeward. Crawling through bilges, stowing gear,
climbing the mast, steering through storm and fog and the very physical balancing of
one’s body against the forces of water will keep you fitter than the vast majority
given to daily walks or runs. Just visit any marina where they accept those sea
gypsies known as liveaboards and see how many out-of-shape sailors there are.

So, I put up a bulletin for our sailing club, because one of the things that frustrates me is that there are NO women sailors in my club. None. So I regularly make bulletins because I have a feeling there are plenty of women sailors but they just don’t know the club exists. If you’re thinking of making a bulletin, the most eye-catching thing is LARGE white letters on dark background. I finished putting up the bulletin, and then stepped back to look at my handiwork. Well, someone stopped to look at it and take the address down, but. . . he was male. Darnit! What do I have to do? Put flowers on the bulletin?????

There is absolutely nothing I know as fun as “messing about in boats”. Even capsizing can be fun, as long as the sun is shining and the water is warm. I don’t know when the weather will warm up, but I plan to head for the lake as soon as it does to take my sailboat out once again.

PRIDE GOES BEFORE YOUR MAST FALLS

I think it’s important, when sailing, to accede when you are wrong. One of the guys in our sailing club once scoffed at me for the idea of using a keychain ring as a ring-ding for securing a pin for a stay. He said he only trusted ring-dings that came from West Marine. Well, once we were out sailing, and the mast on our boat came crashing down. The ring-ding securing the pin for the starboard-side shroud had somehow warped and opened up. Well, someone had a paperclip in their backpack, so we stepped the mast back up and secured it with a paperclip. It’s still there actually. I suggested to this guy that we should replace this paperclip sometime with a real ring-ding because it is now rusty. He said, “Well the paperclip is doing the job.” The same guy who said, “I wouldn’t trust a keychain” which mind you is usually stainless steel, is telling me that a paperclip which is rusty is “doing its job”. Well, sometime this winter, I plan to go over the boat storage space and change that paperclip, cuz I would not want that mast to come crashing down on someone’s head (and it almost did, because the above-mentioned guy was swimming in the water at the time the mast came down), all because some guy thinks a rusty paperclip can do what a stainless steel keychain ring could do better.

Our sailing club sold one of our cars today. Who would think that in joining a sailing club, I’d end up learning to fix cars? We bought an old 1987 GMC Jimmy and the guys in the club taught me how to change the gaskets for the front and rear differentials. How to change transmission fluid, right down to having kitty litter available for those inevitable drips and spills. I learned how to check for broken pins on the shafts, and how to fix broken locking mechanisms on the tailgate. It was a lovely experience, but not something one normally expects to learn from a sailing club. It was only last year, I learned what the “penny test” is. You take a penny and stick Abe Lincoln head-first into your tire treads. If you can see his whole head (even the top), then you definitely need to get your tires changed.

I recently attended the Strictly Sail Sailboat Conference in Chicago. That was held Jan 30th to February 2nd in Navy Pier. What was it all about? Well, you had to pay $12 to get in (if you were an adult), and for that price, you got to walk around and look inside all sorts of sailboats: big ones (> 30 feet with cabin beds enough to sleep 6 people), little ones (Butterflies, Lasers, Flying Juniors, only big enough to seat 1 comfortably and possibly two).

What struck me, however, is that the bigger the boat I stepped into/onto, the snobbier the sailors showing it off. I mean, I know I don’t look like I’m made of money, but certainly, if I ever wanted to buy one, this would be the place I would shop.

I don’t agree that sailing is meant to be a snobby sport. I think it’s silly to look down on small boat sailors. In fact, I rather admire those who have small boats and sail them regularly. In contrast, most boat owners with > 40-foot boats hire others to have fun sailing their boats from port to port. How silly is that? I suppose it would be a good idea for a tax write-off. . . . Other than that, I can’t think of a good reason to pay someone to enjoy my own boat. The concept is about as difficult to me as credit cards. Why should I pay someone to be able to spend my money?

Anyway, sailors are a mixed bunch. I prefer the company of smaller-boat sailors, myself.