For the last few years, we’ve been going out on Friday night sailing races with Dan’s boss Laura and her husband Cap’n Steve and assorted other friends – usually Danny and Sally, Paul and Terri, sometimes others. It’s sponsored by the Portsmouth Boat Club, and it’s a blast After the race, we have appetizers and drinks on board and sometimes go to dinner at the Boat Club, or out somewhere.

We’ve had a few exciting moments out there. One night, I was steering and got a leee-tle too close to the Navy pier – the sentry there was not pleased. He actually had a rifle and shouted at us! Be careful out there

But one thing at a time. We had a surprise visit a couple of weeks ago, from some former neighbors, Chip and Diane. They’re a young couple who weren’t really happy living in a big old house with a big yard to take care of, so they bought a sailboat and moved to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. It was a lot of fun catching up with what they’ve been doing, and meeting their new daughter, Summer, who is about a year old:

I have to say, I was a bit skeptical about their plans to live on a 30-or-so-foot sailboat in Baltimore – neither of them had ever sailed before, so living on a sailboat seemed a bit of, let’s say, an unexpected choice However, they seem very happy and were on their way to Florida in the Intracoastal Waterway. This is Diane’s first time spending extended time traveling on the boat, although Chip had taken the boat up to Maine with a friend, and they spent the summer there.

It would be interesting if they happened to meet up with my mother and her husband Leo, who are also on their way south on the Intracoastal for the winter.

This was taken when we were sailing last Friday, 9/23, on the Elizabeth River between Portsmouth and Norfolk. It was a beautiful night, even though we apparently couldn’t figure out what the race course was supposed to be. Oh well, better luck tomorrow

Update 10/1: re: the race course last week, we were right and all the rest of the boats were wrong! So the race was scrubbed and not counted. Geez. That’s a lesson to go with your gut.

Some related links:

• Portsmouth Boat Club
• Barnacle Regatta
• Race Results

We made sixth place last night out of 10 boats that finished the race; 18 started it – I don’t know what happened to the others. Maybe they got couldn’t figure out the course :-/

Someone asked my mom once what they do when a hurricane is coming. “We get out of the way,” she said. They certainly don’t go sailing for pleasure in its path!

I do hope they’re all okay. But people really need to understand that boats are *dangerous* and you need to learn about good seamanship as well as about how the boat works.