What a rewarding way to end the week and spring semester. Today's special day began by arriving on the docks while my fellow sailor's were readying the sprits'l fleet for the day's schedule of races and boat rides for the Wooden Boat Show guests. Maybe it all played out this way so I could literally see a new perspective~

I had been preparing the s/v Sparrow and her sailing dinghy, Twinkle (little star) for the new season and had every intention to sail her down to Beaufort for the weekend. Fate had a different plan.
This past winter I purchased a kit 4x4 trailer to haul both the dinghy and/or my kayak from Harbor Freight. Having put it together with some help from my daughter and did a test run with Twinkle, it was clear that the trailer's tongue bar was too short. It would need a longer tongue bar to accommodate the length of the two boats. So having acquired a 10' steel squared bar from Gulfstream in Holly Ridge, I was excited to make the transfer. But as I grabbed the end of the bar I did not notice the ragged edge left from the cutting tool and as I unloaded it and the other end dropped off the trailer, the ragged edge sliced right into my left hand's fingers. After stopping the blood flow, cleaning up the wounds and bandaging them, I realized this had just put a kink in my weekend plans.
I had to decline skippering for the Museum sprits'l fleet and sailing the s/v Sparrow to Beaufort due to the injury and subsequent nerve damage.

Determined to not allow my weekend to be a total loss, I decided to just drive down to Beaufort and set up my easel on the dock I had tied the Sparrow to in previous years at the Wooden Boat Show.

As it turned out, it was the most wonderful morning of blending my two passions of art & sailing and feeling fate was forcing my hand to realize this was my bliss.....and all things were working for me~ TYL

As I nervously attempted to finish up my painting of the sprits'l fleet and submitted it to the judging and wet paint sale, I told myself, no big deal, the reward was in spending the morning at the office on the water anyway.
Having enjoyed the lunch the Arts Council had prepared for all the plein air artists from Clawson's, the Council staff announced it was time to put price tags on our paintings. Before I could even finish my lunch, I was being hailed. Someone was anxious to buy my sprits'l painting and needed a price. Wow!

A sweet local woman on her bicycle approached me and haggled over the price until I told her I had a floater frame to put it in and she agreed to pay more than what I was asking. How sweet! So I took her picture with the finished framed painting and before the judging was called, she had proudly put my morning work into her basket and was anxiously riding off to hang it in her home~

Wow...so I headed back down to the docks to hang with the sprits'l skippers, taking a break between races~