Gone, with the wind.

My dad sent me a scan of an old picture (circa 1983, New Rochelle, NY). Grandpa, me (in matching red hats, obv.), Mom and Dad. I don't really remember learning to sail - I just always knew. Probably because most of my early memories are of sailing - tethered to the boat by a short line tied to my lifejacket. If my brother and I were to have ever fallen overboard (we didn't), we would have just bobbed along beside the boat until my parents hauled us back in.

So after many years of sailing with my parents, sailing lasers, bluejays and sunfish at various camps, teaching sailing at Lochearn for two years, and missing sailing when not on the water, John and I finally found "our" boat. She's a 19 foot Squib, built in the late 1960s, and is in need of some minor TLC but is otherwise awesome. We're a little biased, but we think she's beautiful. Her name is Kanga (after the Winnie the Pooh character), and her tender (the little dinghy behind) is known as Roo. Can't rename a boat - it's unlucky - so it's a good thing we think the name is really funny.

We are, indeed, gone with the wind.

I finally finished Margaret Mitchell's novel - it took me nearly a month. Phew. I'm really glad I stuck with it - the last 200 pages were really good, and needed the first 800 (I know, right?) to set them up. On to shorter books for a little while, I think.