October 25, 2013 Photo of the day: "When Boats Fly"
(guest photographer, Eric Horne)
The thermometer on my dashboard read 27° this morning as I drove to school in the dark. All signs indicate that the 2013 sailing season should be over, but for us, the season never started. When Eric sent this photo of our sleek, white boat against the clear blue sky this morning, my heart sank a little. For the first time since we've owned her, perhaps for the first time since I was ten years old, I didn't go sailing at all this year. Life just got in the way.
When we bought our boat in 2006, a year after we were married, we spent a lot of time cleaning and tuning, making her own...and it was fun! We spend hours deliberating about what to name her. I can't mention her previous name; that would be bad luck! We narrowed it down to two favorites: "Blew Eyes" (the obvious homophone of the wind and my own baby blues) and "Sail la Vie." As a French teacher, I enjoyed the play on words, and in the end, it seemed like the most inspired name. The French expression, "C'est la vie!" literally means "That's life!" Colloquially, it has taken on the equivalent of "S*** Happens!" How appropriate for a sport that relies primarily on the elements (wind, water, current), combined with an expensive vessel that inevitably malfunctions at some level and of course human miscalculation, and well, you get the idea!
While she rests in her cradle for the next several months, I will surely contemplate whether this is all worth it, weighing the pros and cons of owning a boat as the sailing season seems to get shorter and shorter, or in this case, non-existent. Sailing is a lot of work, a lot of expense, a lot of discomfort...yet it's also exhilarating, sometimes peaceful, a bonding experience...a part of who I am!
This sailing season was definitely a [w]itch,
but there's always next year...Sail la Vie!