I went to a garden party …

…and it’s all right now …

Yeah, I’ve been mostly incommunicado for the past two weeks, and it’s been because I’ve been immersed in the effort to write a 50,000 word novel (well, really, a novelette) in 30 days. But Tillerman has issued a challenge, and I will take time away from my word-count-amassing efforts in order to live up to that challenge.

He has asked us to tell the world who, in the world of sailing, living or dead, real or fictional, we would invite to a dinner party, and why.

The first person I would invite, no matter what, would be Zorro, my mentor-coach-trainer-friend who means so much more to me than I can explain to anyone, even Pat. He featured prominently in a previous writing challenge, as chronicled in A Peak Experience with Team Zorro (part 1), A Peak Experience with Team Zorro (part 2), and A Peak Experience with Team Zorro (part 3).

I know that a lot of people find Zorro to be difficult to relate to. He has an ego. Before he was a sailor, he was a world-champion pole vaulter, and he would have been in the Olympics if the U.S. hadn’t boycotted the 1980 games. In 1977, his pole vault clinched the NCAA track and field championship for UTEP. Later, he took up sailing, and he was in the running to be on the Olympic team in sailing. He likes to win. He’s driven, and often impatient, and those characteristics often rub people the wrong way. But I love him, and I just couldn’t have a dinner party, especially a sailing related dinner party, without him.

Of course, I would have to have the great Tillerman himself at the party, but even more important, I would want to be sure that Tillerwoman was there as well. I have, alas, not been all that great of a gardener, but I greatly admire those who are, and who, like sailors, work with what Nature gives us, whether it’s good wind and water or good rain and topsoil, to bring experiences of beauty.

I would have to have Edward at the party – and his family as well. He shares my affinity for pirates. And his kids look so stunningly, astonishingly much like Pat did when he was that age, I keep thinking Edward’s just borrowed some snapshots from the family album. Maybe there’s some long-lost link.

Because of my affinity for boats and music related to boats, Adam would have to be there as well. If he could bring Jimmy Buffett along, that would make the party even sweeter.

Oh, yeah, I should also probably invite my husband, Pat, and my son, Gerald, to the party.