Fran McKay

Aren’t they all??

We had a mini pre-celebration carrot cake for Fran’s birthday (which is tomorrow)— I guess I was enjoying it too much to think to get pictures. (That’s the birthday girl/skipper at the helm.) The wind was indeed all over the place today, both in direction and strength. Not exactly unusual, but hey, it keeps us on our toes. Gorgeous sunny day with Mt. Hood looking clearer than usual, lots of holiday-makers out on their boats and the beaches (I use the term loosely), plus 2 barges from 2 directions just in case we got bored. (We didn’t.)

And then there was the premiere episode of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Socks! In which I give an extra pair of socks to Alyson, who will pass them along to the next sailor in need. Stay tuned for the next thrilling installment! And I just now realized that, in all the docking practice excitement (which more than made up for the lack of wind), I never took any photos during this sail. Hopefully someone else got some?? And thanks especially to Alyson and Fran for guiding me through my first docking experience!!

… and straight into a very active* (she understated), slightly crazy, and, dare I say, educational sail in winds gusting into the 20s. Gorgeous day with my new sailing friends on the Columbia, wouldn’t have missed this for the world! *Hence minimal photos.

One of “those” days… the wind, which felt great when we were walking up to the boat, turned very fickle— fresh, then fresher, then suddenly almost non-existent and/or completely changing direction. There was even a brief wing-on-wing interlude until the wind freshened up again, only to almost completely disappear as we were rounding a buoy. (But then, why should today be different?) As always, though, with 5 of us to play with our fickle winds, it was a great time and a beautiful day out sailing on the Columbia.