No, I wasn’t seasick, but we did go sailing while I’m suffering from this unseasonal head cold. Amazingly, I felt fine while we were on the water.
We did our usual lazy Sunday morning routine but packed our stuff for a 10:45 departure to Lake Gaston. There, we spent the next few hours floating around the lake.
Right off the bat, Kelly lost her hat to the wind. We circled back to pick it up and while reaching for it Kelly fell in! Thus, we got to practice our man overboard drill. I was going to sail back over to pick her up but the wind wasn’t cooperating. We then opted for her to swim to the boat. Kelly’s a strong swimmer but with the hat one hand she couldn’t keep up with the boat.
Finally, I put the boat in “irons” (turned it directly into the wind) long enough for Kelly to clamber up Whimsy’s ladder. The kids and I spent the rest of the trip teasing her since she was nice and cool while we were sweating in the sun.
Before we got two miles away from the dock the wind seemed to die on us. It became oppressively hot. All sorts of powerboats, jet skis, and pontoon boats were swarming around us, dumping air out our sails with every wake.
The kids, who are usually good sports about sailing, weren’t too thrilled with the wakes (and the heat, I bet). They asked repeatedly to go home yet as soon as I caught a good puff of wind they began to whine. Thus we cut things short. When we got back to the dock and unloaded the boat – sure enough – the wind began to howl. Argh!
Retrieving the boat was relatively easy. The combination to the lock on the launch ramp had changed overnight, which caused us some delay until Kelly spoke to a nearby neighbor. Then the minivan had trouble pulling Whimsy up the ramp. It was the first time that we had had a problem with that. I chalked it up to the chalky dirt on the ramp: it was so dry that the wheels spun into the dirt. After a few minutes of rocking and changing some direction, Kelly got the boat up the hill like an old pro.
On the way home, we spotted crossing gates down on the nearby track. This is the same track that runs behind our house, so we decided to stop and wave at “our” train. The engineer obliged, giving us a good wave and a few toots of the horn. He was hauling wood chips in a two-unit consist (6359 pulling 6138, for you fellow railfans) and was making about 40 MPH. We figured we could beat him into Raleigh so since we had nowhere to go this afternoon we tried to follow him there.
I suppose either the train stopped somewhere or we somehow missed him on the way home, but we waited at the downtown CSX yards for 10 minutes and never saw the train. Oh well. Back in the car for the trip back home.
I began to sneeze vigorously after dinner tonight. I’ve gone through a handful of tissues already. Last night I slept very lightly from the cold. I’m hoping tonight isn’t a repeat performance.
With any luck I’ll have turned a corner on this cold tomorrow.
