Five O'Clock Somewhere

Welcome to Five O'Clock Somewhere, where it doesn't matter what time zone you're in; it's five o'clock somewhere. We'll look at rural life, especially as it happens in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, cats, sailing (particularly Etchells racing yachts), and bits of grammar and Victorian poetry.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

The wind continues

Oh, was that a soap opera?

Yesterday ended up being way too windy to go sailing. Different people ended up doing different things. Gerald went with Rich to help Fred and Delia with work on their new boat. Pat and I stayed at the Strasia compound for a while, watching videos Larry had brought of various America’s Cup races, and when Larry announced that he was going to do some work on his boats, Pat went to Syzygy -to work on sanding and refinishing the tiller, while Vicky, Margaret, Kari and I went to the Charles to soak in one of the hot tubs on the roof.

We had a good soak, and a bunch of good laughs – Vicky has a treasure trove of jokes that she has used as a middle-school teacher, and we got a good dose of those. We talked about how coincidences seem to come together at the right time for all of us; we all have had a syzygy or two here and there. The other girls have also noticed Pat’s change in behavior; since I’ve started this Adams Cup thing, he’s become much more, um, amorous, lovey-dovey, something like that. I definitely wouldn’t call it possessive, since he let me take off last weekend on a road trip with the two sexiest guys in the sailing club. But Pat and I have had more action lately than when we were newlyweds. It’s been rubbing off, too – after our soaking session, Kari had us drop her off at her hotel so she could get in some “snuggle time” with Buzz before the sailing club dinner. Maybe it doesn’t work as a universal recommendation, but it seems to me that getting involved in a serious women’s sailing effort gets the guys to value us more.

When Margaret, Vicky, and I arrived back at the compound, we found that Larry had given up on boat maintenance and gone back to watching videos, and so had a whole lot of other people. Pat described his efforts sanding the tiller of Syzygy, and several people suggested that he could have saved himself some effort by standing out in the wind and holding the tiller up so the wind could sand it clean; Pat responded that that wouldn’t work because he couldn’t control the fineness of the grit – what the wind was picking up was way too coarse.

One disappointment this weekend is who’s missing – Braxton and Jo Ann. Brax is brilliant, but he’s also young, and he’s impatient, and he’s dealing with some major hassles with the business. Jo Ann is his anchor. She’s smart, and she’s not afraid to work hard, and she’s devoted to him. If I were Brax, I wouldn’t waste a minute; I’d haul Jo Ann down to the courthouse just as fast as I could. She’s way too valuable, both materially and emotionally, to risk losing. Braxton and Jo Ann were planning to be here this weekend, but they phoned Larry at the last minute to say they weren’t coming. I think the business troubles are really getting Braxton down.

Meanwhile, the weather here continues to be really rough. The wind didn’t let up overnight the way it usually does, and it’s unusually cold for this part of the world, this time of year – temperatures in the 40s, and wind chills near freezing. No sailing today. Ironically, the prediction for tomorrow is good for sailing – warmer, and with winds around 15 mph. Unfortunately, tomorrow is also Monday, which means nearly everybody has to work and can’t hang around the lake. Argh.

2 Comments:

Blogger Tillerman said...

Sailors do it in waves.

Mon Mar 13, 08:27:00 AM MST  
Blogger Pat said...

Actually sailors do it in boats on the waves. No boat = no go. None of the big boats and crews wanted to go out this past weekend. Most of the J's never launched, and our boats weren't available.

Mon Mar 13, 10:09:00 AM MST  

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