Sailing In Your Blood

Good morning everyone! You‚Äôll never guess…0 degrees. We are gonna have braggin‚Äô rights here pretty quckly if this keeps us and according to the weather folks we are in for a stretch of cold Arctic air. Our fire department was called out late last night for a minor fender bender (car vs tree on an icy road) and the cold temperature just doesn‚Äôt seem to matter when you have some reason to be out. Now heat on the other hand…I can‚Äôt do heat. I wilt in the humidity. How you folks from warm climates do it, I will never know. So I guess it just comes down to what you are used.

Which makes me think, not that I do that alot but….. I received a phone call from a local teacher yesterday afternoon asking if I might be willing to talk to her alternative high school class about what I do for a living. Just talk about how you got in to the business and how you learned about boats and sailing, she says. Well I grew up around boats as a wee little urchin. I spent the first years of my life in Marblehead, MA. My Dad always had boats. We had the forced family sailing vacations to Cape Cod and the islands. I used to take a small daysailer out solo at the age of 10 or 12. Perhaps as formative as any part of my experience growing up was my first lobster skiff. I set 10 traps out in the bay and hauled them religously pulling up with them not only crazy stuff from the bottom of the ocean but a host of experiences in all kinds of weather. As I ate my catch the sea was working its way into my bones. And it is not to say I can‚Äôt be comfortable in the woods I love to work in when I get a chance. I get that my grandfather who was a farmer and woodsman and who I had the pleasure of working alongside. But I have a theory that the place you grow up in becomes a part of your soul. I would feel as out of place on a midwestern farm or in downtown Manhattan as the proverbial fish out of water.

So I was looking at the accompanying picture of Sawyer in a pea pod. Last summer he pushed the pea pod off the beach and off he went rowing fisherman style, facing forwards. I had rowed with him 2 or 3 times, hands together on the oars, but what he did last summer was a quantum leap from anything I had ever done with him. I guess he picked it up through osmosis or something. I was a proud Papa, of course, but I was also in awe of this little man who had that spirit of adventure in his blood and a feel for what made sense in a boat.

I hope your day is filled with whatever it is that is “in your blood”. Have a great day. Be well. Do good.

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