Monday, July 26, 2010

Sailing Update

It's been a while since we posted an update. The most common questions we hear these days from friends? "When are you going to Honey Ryder again? Isn't it hard not being with her each weekend? Isn't it hard being so far away from her? Isn't it weird not spending each weekend as Lake Perry."
Well.....
Soon. Yes, Yes! And Yes.
What haven't they been asking "What the hell have you two been up to since you are not sailing on Honey Ryder?"
Well....
We have been doing some much needed catch up on house, yard and rental house chores. Being at the lake Friday through Sunday, April through October for the past umteen years, we have let some stuff slip on the home front. Because of all this chore catch up stuff, I can now state unequivocally that the worse boat chore is still better than the best house chore. House chores suck in my opinion. Yard chores are the worst! Tom does better at them than I do. His attitude is way better than mind when approaching chores. He feels pride in a good job and a sense of accomplishment. Me? The whole time I am thinking "I should be sailing, I should be at Honey Ryder or the lake. Just get it done so you can so sailing Sabrina!" I am not the best worker bee in the hive when it comes to house and yard chores.
However, we are in fact sailing almost every weekend. We still have s/v Riot, our day sailor that we co-own with Wayne and Jan.

Several Saturday's ago we took off around noon and sailed all the way to the yacht club. There we visited our previous boat Distant Drum and her new owners, bummed a beer or two off Cheri, checked out Joan and Pat's new boat, as well as Tolly's. They tried to get us to stay for the club party but we had a long beat back to our marina. Three 1/2 hrs later we pulled into our marina just as the sun set below the horizon. Whew! But what a great day of sailing.

A few Sunday's back the wind was really iffy so we opted instead for our Hobie Mirage Kayak. We were able to peddle fast enough to catch up with a fellow sailor that was just ghosting along. We rafted up for a bit and visited. The cooler we packed kept us supplied with cold bevs as well as lunch on the water.

The B-Dockers have been wonderful to offer up their boats for us to stay the night on when we do go to the lake for an overnight. We have taken Tim and Kim up on it a couple of times and Denny once as well. Water people are such good people. Land people? We have our doubts at times!

Tom and I have also been busy recently with our new part time, weekend jobs. We have started teaching as sailing instructors for Kansas City Sailing in Lawrence KS. **Please see the link off to the right hand side of this page for their web site. Our first class was Sunday August 8th - Intro to Sailing. We had 4 terrific students. It was a blast. Our schedules are filling up with classes as well as private lessons. We will take our official ASA Instructor Certification Class in August. This will allow us to teach ASA Basic Keelboat. While we will be teaching for Kansas City Sailing, I must admit that I did sneak a look on the ASA web site to see what other ASA Schools were hiring. There was one in particular that caught my eye. One of the additional requirements at this particular school was that the applicant must be able to teach at their Caribbean location in the winter months! HELLO! My name is Sabrina and I will be your new ASA Keelboat Instructor! Aah SNAP, SNAP, SNAP!

Check out the killer Coast Guard boat that we spotted in the parking lot of Perry High School one Saturday as we headed to the lake. These boats are built in Lawrence KS for Great Lakes USCG Ice and Water. Joe Hutto owner of National Marine Electronics and Communications LLC does all the electronics for these boats. He took the time to tell us all about it and show is all the toys. So very, very kewl. If you get on You Tube, you can find video of them testing these boats out on the river outside Lawrence.

So that is our latest update.