Yesterday we went sailing for the first time since the Spring school vacation last April. Took us all day Saturday to get the boat ready and I had to go up the mast with Terry's help (we use a boatsun's chair), and finish the work on the lights. Lots of fun dangling over the deck 45 feet up, the wind whistling around you, the boat rocking.

Had things ready by Sunday morning, loaded up food and drink and four friends and set off. The wind was 15 knots from the ESE--strangely enough for this time of year--and this allowed for a great heading of NE under a full genoa and main. I experimented with the self-steering vane and found the boat was unbalanced with the sails set the way they were. Finally, we furled up two thirds of the jib and put up the staysail. This balanced things nicely and the Cape Horn vane work great with just a little Tiller Pilot to keep us pointed in desired direction. Afterwards we had Terry's great lasagna and red wine on the seawall and celebrated a great day on the water.

Interesting, though, how paranoid we writers get about saving our stuff. I'm halfway through writing the last book in the Eye of the Stallion trilolgy (working title: The Time Drifters), and everything was on board the boat--the computer and the pen drives I save the back up copies of the book to. So, before we left the dock, I was careful to put one of the pen drives in my truck for safe keeping. Can't be too safe, you know. The worst horror of horrors for a writer is to lose anything he's written to some foolish oversight or accident.