Weekend

Victoria, Ruby, Olive, Jacob, Kate, Michael, and I left the dock at Emery Cove around noon on Friday for a 2 night stay at Alaya Cove, Angel Island. We’ve made this trip twice before but never with company. I decided to fill up the third tank (for an alleged total of 110 galons) just in case. We did our shopping the night before and got everything ship shape early on Friday morning for our guest’s 9am arrival. As expected it took a few hours to get Kate and her family moved in, and we took the opportunity to shower and pack a few more last minute maintenance tasks in. By 1pm we had the sails up and were close hauled on a single tack that took us clear to Angel Island. We did make 2 more tacks in Raccoon Straights before dousing the sails and motoring in to the Cove. The wind was strong enough to require a 40% reduction in our 150% genoa, but it was a gentler ride than many we’ve had this summer. ...

From time to time I am reminded that my culture has no coming of age tradition. Some of the effects of this deficit are subtle, some more obvious. This weekend, as I near my 35th birthday I experienced another Man Making Moment. Man Making Moments are different for everyone. I suspect many are like me and derive some significant part of their manliness ideal from their fathers. For me, the image of my dad under the hood, fixing, tuning and explaining our car’s inner workings, has left a mark. When the AAA guy confirmed my suspicion that the starter had failed on the ManVan I was both anxious and eager. This was going to be a greasy, cramped, and physical repair, but I knew I could do it. Never mind that I had never even heard a story about someone replacing a starter. I grabbed my socket set (thanks again Dad) and crawled under the truck. An hour later I had the starter motor out and Allison and I headed down to Kragen to get a replacement. I was quite surprised when the Nick (the Kragen sales guy) handed me a huge honkin box. Aparently I had only removed part of the starter. The rest of the job was going to be a lot harder than I had anticipated. ...