I don't have a whole lot to offer today, one thing that I forgot to relate in the post-trip blathering and a funny thing that happened today.

It seems that perhaps I really thought that our survival was in question. At one point when I was below I went the companionway to check on Mike. He looked back in, his face was salt-rimmed, reddened from the cold and dripping from the latest assault of the wind and waves. The words from his mouth were ... "Would you please light me a pipe?" Any of you who know me understand that I am a foaming at the mouth anti-smoking creature and that it is very much against my wishes that Mike smokes a pipe or the odd cigar. I responded "You're kidding, right?" and he said "But I am sooo cold and it is too windy to light it up here. Puleeese." You have to understand that the boat was bucking like a bronco, it was blowing up a stink, and we were regularly getting the decks washed with water. So, what did I do? I staggered my way from handhold to handhold though the salon and collected the pipe, tobacco, and lighter. I managed to steady myself enough to load up the bowl and then propped myself in the companionway and lit the tobacco and puffed away until it caught. It is a major miracle that I was not instantly seasick - my mind kept going back to an evening that included lots of martinis, scotch, and cigar puffing and how tremendously sick I really was after that. It all comes down to the fact that I did not want to have on my conscience that I had denied the last simple thing that Mike asked of me. Dramatic, huh? But that was where my head was at the time and no way am I EVER touching the danged pipe again.

Something funny happed this morning on one of my trips back from the laundry room at the Yachting Center where we are still berthed. There was a lovely, graceful circling of gulls overhead and all of a sudden one individual, seemingly deliberately, peeled off and flew directly over a beautifully maintained black Mercedes-Benz parked in the lot by the dock. On his fly by he let go the biggest poop I have witnessed in a long time of living on the coast - it smeared down the side of the Benz' rear door and then the gull rejoined the graceful circling of the group. Hilarious - perhaps an avian comment on the fastidious maintenance of the vehicle? When I showed it to Mike later in the day there were now three bird poo smears on the same car and not a one on any of the other cars in the lot - what fun, eh?