Perhaps the stores think we are only doing our tire-kicking in their locations and then proceeding to the internet to place the order. In this case we would probably have purchased at the store, because we wanted to make sure we got the item in hand before going back to Mexico. We also considered waiting until the boat show on Wednesday, but decided the vendors there probably wouldn’t have high-end items like image-stabilized binoculars, if their stores didn’t have them. As it turned out, the show didn’t have any; so it was a good thing we ordered on the internet and paid to have it delivered to my daughter Melissa’s house in Newport Beach, which will be our last stop before returning to Mexico.
Our plans called for attending the Strictly Sail boat show in Oakland on Wednesday, the first day of the show, because we were heading down to LA on Thursday. We met up for lunch with Dan and Kim of Noelani, whose Valiant 39 sailboat was in the slip next to ours when we were berthed in Alameda. Dan and Kim run a business in England, but come over for a month of sailing their boat in San Francisco Bay about twice a year. Dan has my enthusiasm for going cruising, while Kim has many of the same concerns that Sheilagh had when we first started out. Hopefully our input was helpful regarding our experiences and we will see them in a foreign port one of these years.
We had a number of items we were interested in looking at including inflatable fenders, some spring tension devices known as Shockles to take some of the load off mooring and anchor lines, a possible replacement for our anemometer that has ceased to function, and an inflatable kayak of some sort. The latter item, the kayak, has been the source of some heated discussions (okay, maybe just lukewarm) between Sheilagh and me. She thinks I don’t need another toy, and I think I do! I wanted something I could use for exercise as well as for surfing the waves a bit. Sheilagh wanted nothing to do with a new possession that might require exercise of any sort. And she certainly didn’t want a kayak with two seats unless there was only one paddle that she would never have to use.
Our solution was a compromise: I would get a kayak and she would get a small laptop computer to replace her larger one that was too cumbersome on the boat. It turned out that I found an ideal inflatable kayak that is extremely rigid, and Sheilagh later found a laptop she liked – both priced about the same. My toy weighs about 22 pounds; hers, 3 pounds. My toy takes up about 30 times the volume of hers. Now I’ll have to put up with her comments such as “Why aren’t you using your kayak more often?” and “Where are you going to keep it when it is inflated, or not inflated?” I plan to have so much fun with it that she’ll beg me to use it. As if her wanting to use it would ever happen!
After a great visit with Stephanie, Hayden, and their son, Evan, for a few days, we flew from San Jose to Ontario airport to stay with Lisa and Bob here in Yorba Linda. Lisa and Bob are both into Porsche autocross racing (on a course with timed runs racing against the clock) along with their grown up kids, Kris (and his wife Rebekah), Karen, and Lorri. They do this racing every other week or so, and now have two Porsches devoted exclusively to racing, with several others between them for daily errands. Bob and Lisa are both retired; so the Porsches are no longer used for commuting. Bob took Sheilagh and me out separately to show us what the race car could do, and to give us a chance to drive it. I was very impressed with the acceleration which reminded me of the force of gravity one experiences when pulling up into a loop in a glider. The cornering was a weird sensation for a pilot, since we always bank into turns while the Porsche just seemed to settle closer to the ground and hugged the corner while the force tended to push me out to one side.
Bob and Lisa's racing porscheSheilagh loves a stick shift anyway, but she came back from her short lesson with Bob with a very clear “need for speed.” Bob and Lisa lent us the Porsche 911 that they use for errands for a few days, and Sheilagh has pretty much monopolized the driver’s seat ever since. Now she accelerates out of stops as if she were a drag racer, and she can’t wait to stomp on the accelerator as she rounds every corner. She is beginning to cuss at drivers who get in her way when she wants to accelerate. It may well be that she is prepared to abandon sailing (at a speed of 5 knots) for racing cars at much higher speeds. She says she plans to keep our agreement to cruise for one year and see how we feel about it at the end of that time. When the year is up in October, I intend to have Bob enlighten her on the cost of maintaining a racing car and replacing worn tires. For now I’ll let her enjoy the driving experience in the Porsche we’re borrowing.
We on the West Coast are blessed to live so far apart that we only have to get together infrequently, and then, to paraphrase an expression, “absence has made the heart grow fonder.” I’ve heard plenty of stories from friends on the East Coast whose families live so close together that they are expected to get together every other weekend or so. These friends have the “golden handcuffs” of not being as free as they might want to be on any given weekend, but are glad to be near to so many close relatives. I think Bob and Lisa have solved the problem very well by including the entire family in their Porsche racing interest; so that every other weekend they all want to get together for a common interest.
What does all this have to do with cruising, which was and is the subject of this blog generally? This is a short break from what we’ve been doing, and it has given us a new appreciation for the cruising we have been doing for the past five months. We’ve noticed that the pace here is quicker, and we appreciate even more the laid-back lifestyle we’ve been living on the boat. It is also a fabulous opportunity to appreciate U.S. stores (marine supply stores, supermarkets, hardware stores) with so much to choose from and so well arranged. In a Mexican hardware store (ferreteria), the proprietor often has to use a hook to remove items hanging high on the wall to get at the item we are interested in looking at. Everything there is jumbled together, while here in a typical hardware store everything is neatly displayed in rows of like items. We now really appreciate what we had taken for granted for all the years prior.
On Friday my brother, Paul, flew down from Bainbridge Island in Washington to visit with Lisa and Bob and Sheilagh and me. Paul was the fifth of ten children in our family and the fourth of eight boys. He has a sense of humor that never seems to quit, but a horrible tendency (ability?) to make puns at every opportunity. He has tempered his use of puns over time, but is still arguably the best joke teller in the family. The visit was enjoyable, and now if I could only remember the set up and punch lines of the jokes he told.
My first of two sisters, Linda, and her husband, Barry, also flew into the LA area this week, but for a better reason than seeing Sheilagh and me. They came to visit their first grandchild, a granddaughter named Adelaide Skye Llewellyn (and that’s not including her last name) born a few days earlier to their son, Ben, and his wife, Alexia. We all trooped over to Pasadena to visit them on Sunday, and got a chance to marvel again at the small size of newborn babies. The newcomer is as cute as newborns all seem to be, although I couldn’t see which side of the family was favored in the facial features – I guess I’m just not as sensitive as men are supposed to be these days. Frankly I expressed my concern with saddling such a small person with such a long name, but was reassured that the child could pick the name she liked as she got older.
We ended the day with an appearance at a birthday party for a three-year-old grandniece named Allison, who is the daughter of Kris and Rebekah (Bob and Lisa’s son and daughter-in-law). One of the problems of being from a big family is simply remembering the many children and grandchildren produced by my siblings, and the problem with mentioning even one of them in a blog is the need to mention all of them. Well, I have now done my duty and can get on with the blog.
Next week we visit my daughter and her husband, Melissa and Tim, and their daughters, Delaney, Riley, and Paige. There we will celebrate birthdays for both Delaney and Tim, but that will be grist for the next blog. More later . . .
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