Some Sailing Stuff Sailing is my main passion. There's something about being on the water with just the sails and my own wits to take me where I want to go that makes me feel closer to nature somehow. Instead of just starting up a motor, and putting the throttle down, and churning through the watery ecosystem, chopping up all that gets in the way of your propellers, burning through fossil fuel by the gallon, and belching noxious fumes, sailing takes at least some knowledge of the elements and the forces they apply to all that venture into them. Sailing is this delicate dance with nature, sometimes calm, and sometimes furious, but always fulfilling. It's something you just have to experience to be out on the water on a warm summer night, propelled quietly along, with the only sound being the gentle slapping of the waves against the hull, gazing at a glowing, dancing path of light starting at the edge of the boat and pointing the way to a brilliant full moon high in the night sky. Ok, enough of that! I didn't have a lot of interest in sailing until I came to Seattle from Arizona in the summer of 1989. Once here, I soon became enamored of the flocks of beautiful sailboats, the sounds of the sea birds, and smell of the sea. I've also always been curious about the world that I live in and the forces of nature, so I guess it was only natural that I would go to the Center for Wooden Boats and sign up for sailing lessons. I bought a book and studied it, so that I would understand the concepts and terminology, and breezed through the lessons (pun intended). I have always enjoyed the wooden boats at 'The Center', and will always have a fondness for a certain salmon colored 'Beetle Cat', that I hope they never retire. Once 'graduated', a friend and I joined a 'singles' sailing club, and I got my first taste of the larger 'keelboats'. While at this club, I met the skipper of the 'Nasty Jack' (who's name I don't remember), and started racing in local buoy races, mostly on the lakes. The Nasty Jack's racing career was short, and not very successful, so it wasn't long before I moved to another boat. The 'Oz', and its owner, Marda Runstadt, were a completely different experience. The Oz was a larger boat, with assigned positions, and a much more serious crew. We sailed hard, but only won a few races. At some point, I became too busy with full-time school, and full-time work, and had to retire from the Oz, and from racing for a while. A couple of years later, while working at WRQ, I met Cherie Morgenroth, and was soon invited to crew aboard 'Airloom', a beautiful 40' Baba. Airloom's crew was a little more laid back, but still serious about winning races, and that's what we actually did (and they still do) a lot of. Airloom is a big, beamy (wide), cruising boat, and when I tell people that it often wins, they laugh and say "Well, that must be because of its handicap". I reply that the handicap doesn't explain why it's often first across the finish line, or very close to it. In the Fall of 2000, I finally bought my own boat, a 28' San Juan, called WindSwept, and towards the end of the summer of 2002, Tim (Cherie's husband) finally talked me into entering it in its first racing series. With a lot of help from some of Airloom's fine crew, and the loan of a folding prop from one of them, WindSwept managed to win its first race, and at least one more to give us a 'third place' in that first series. Other races since then have had mixed results, but Myself and the crew are mostly novices at racing, and I know I still have a lot to learn. Still, I look forward to that learning process, and the fun we will have while doing so. I do have pictures of WindSwept and Airloom, and I'll put some up soon, but until then, you can go to Airloom.org, and browse through that site, and look at the pictures there. They are mostly of Airloom, and crew, but if you look closely, you might find a shot or two that also includes WindSwept.