Fair winds and new friends

Jim Pickard my sailing partner and good friend picked me up from the house Saturday morning at 7:30 in his Mini cooper with his dinghy in tow. We headed down to the Beaufort downtown marina boat launch. Fired up the dinghy and headed out the mooring field. Got the east Coast Lady’s yammer engine fired up and unhooked her. We headed south the 2 mile trek over to the Port Royal Landing marina. This will become her new home. Well, at least for the next contract year.  Jim took the dinghy back to get the cooper, while I readied the ECL for a day sailing. I checked the engine oil and changed the alternator belt.

Debby and I wanted to take Chris, our neighbor out sailing before he was redeployed back to the Afghanistan Theater.   Chris and Michelle are to be married in October, and when he returns in February we hope to sail and sail a lot. He’s experienced racing this size vessel under the PHFR handicapped rules.     ”United States Performance Handicap Racing Fleet” It would be a dream comes true, for me to run the East Coast Lady in a Race and pull off a Cup. I think Jim Chris and my self will make a good race team. This Lady Has had her share of cups, won by Vince Hager. She is a fast boat that handles like a dream. I think Debby and I counted 22 chunks of silver in his trophy room. He either placed or won, in races like: The governors’ cup, the South Atlantic Yacht Racing Association, The Calibogue cup. Just to name a few. Jim and Marsha are becoming very good friends. On this sail we had a great time.

It was about 21 miles round trip.  We sailed from 1: pm to 4:50  No one got hurt and we didn’t hit anything. The smile on Marsha’s face when we took on some good wind and healed over to around 20 degrees, was priceless. She was having a blast and so were the rest of us. After we got back to the Port Royal marina, we flaked the sails and lock everything up for the night. We all took off in different directions but ended up at our home in the Battery Point. I cooked up a batch of my world famous barbecued shrimp and hamburgers. We drank wine told stories; we laugh a bought the days sail while we shared the local wine favorites. Sami, my daughter played and sang songs on her new guitar. Fair winds and new friends. I can’t wait till our new friends get back to the Low Country so we can build more memories like this past weekend. I was exhausted on Sunday morning but it was one of the best weekends of my life. Thanks Jim and Marsha, without you guys this weekend would not have been near as memorable.

I want to give a great big shout out to Debby. She did a great job sailing. I am so very proud of you. Just to let everyone know, last weekend Debby launched my skiff and retrieved it back onto the trailer right by herself. Great job on that too. You are becoming quite the captain. Proud to have you as my wife.