Cooking is a ancient thing, deeply and instinctually resonant. “Look at the beast I killed and brought home for you!” Also, chocolates.
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“Grab some stuff, lets hit the beach”. No bad day ever started with these words. I’m from the Caribbean, where February is just another month, but after living in California nearly 3 decades, you start to appreciate just how special it is to live a few minutes from the Pacific – it keeps us warm in winter, and cool in summer, and is always putting on a show.
The funny thing is that the beach is there every day and the sunset happens nearly every day and we kind of forget about it. The world is a beautiful place, and it’s in our nature to normalize it, to let it fade into the background. I simultaneously envy and pity folks who live on the beach.
So, “grab some stuff, lets hit the beach” we said on some random Saturday, and we did, and it was awesome.
San Diego has always been a sailing-friendly area – it is part of the Santa Barbara ‘bubble’, which protects us from most of the gale-level winds north of Point Conception (our Cape Horn Jr.), but *occasionally* we get decent wind. Even then, it’s exceedingly well behaved decent wind :)
Here, the compression off Point Loma pushed the wind to 20+ knots, and Azulita loved it. I was able to get her to about 9.5kts, well above her hull speed. Keep an eye on the wake trailing the boat, and the bow wave we’re leaving behind (nothing compared to a motorboat, but massive for me :) )
San Diego sunsets are famously spectacular, and a perfect late December sail is arguably the best way to experience them. ‘Nuff said :)
There is no facile answer here – I just do. There is a feeling you get when you set your sails just right, anticipatIng a puff a wind, and your boat accelerates under you, that, just… wow. There is nothing like it. Despite how personal this love is for me, I’ll try to capture a bit the ‘why’ of it here.
So, specifically, what is it about sailing that appeals to me?
It’s the complexity of it, I think. You can spend your entire life learning how to sail. I don’t know of anyone who claims to have mastered sailing: not day-sailing shlubs like me, and not world champion skippers like Spithill. There is always something to improve, some bit of delight waiting to reward you for a tweak done right.
Continue readingThose familiar with southern California would be forgiven for thinking that it is a mostly dry place, with scrubby brush and stubby trees. If you move here from NorCal, as we did, you soon come to miss the tall redwoods and old oaks that dot the hills and valleys.
You’d be forgiven for thinking its a dry place, but you’d still be wrong. Head up any one of the three or so mountain ranges around here and you’ll soon find yourself driving through alpine valleys bordered tall mountains which are often snow-clad even in summer, studded by pines which may not be what you are used to, but are familiar nonetheless.
Continue readingPhotographic Evidence
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