How I Met My Husband, and Why He Should Have Run

Many, many years ago, my husband and I met. It was fate, it was kismet.
I raced on an International 14 sailboat (a development-class dinghy capable of going up to 20 knots) every Thursday, and one evening I went down to meet my usual skipper. He said that he had tried to call me, but he couldn't get a hold of me (days before cell-phones.) He wasn't able to sail that night. That was okay- I could say hello to people and then go home. Someone told me that there was a guy looking for someone to sail with, and that's how we met.
The 14 is a very squirrely boat- you look at it and it turtles. This was B's first time in one, and since I don't like to skipper, B was on the helm. He didn't believe me when I told him to drop the main NOW, and we capsized frequently and regularly. We were sailing in cold seawater, and even though we were wearing wetsuits, we got pretty cold.
I was house-sitting for a friend about a half-hour north of the marina, and she always let me drive her car (a Volvo station wagon.) When I went back to the car, I found that I had locked the keys (including the house keys) in the car, along with all my clean, non-smelly clothes.
B was nice enough to drive me in my smelly wet-suit (I never was a pretty sight in one) all the way up the house. I had to crawl in a window and unlock the house, and after I changed, we looked for a spare car key. We thought we had one, and then back down to the car.
It wasn't a match. B then turned around once again and drove me to the house. I ended up calling a locksmith the next day.
Now, wouldn't you have run?

Some maritime books-

This is the story of a man that entered the first round-the-world solo sailing race. Donald Crowhurst and his boat were ill-prepared to take this on, and things start to go wrong almost immediately. In the end, his boat was found abandoned in the Atlantic, and one of sailing's great stories was born. In the boat, two logs are found- a fake one that indicates that Crowhurst is winning, and a real one. The real one follows Crowhurst's decline into madness and proves that he never left the Atlantic. I have read this book several times, and it never fails to fascinate me.


Hal Roth covered the whole race in this book. There were nine entries in this race, and they all had interesting stories. One, Bernard Moitessier, who was winning the race, decided to keep sailing and ended up living in French Polynesia. It is interesting how Crowhurst's so-called winning affected the other sailors.


Happy Reading!