For you terra-bound readers, sailors refer to wind direction, and the boat's and sails' relationship to it, as points of sail. If the wind is blowing nearly straight into your face, it's one point of sail, across the breadth of your boat (or your beam) it's another, and if it's blowing from over one shoulder, and your sails are let out wide to catch it, you're sailing on a broad reach.
Since god was a kid, boats have been assigned a gender. They're considered female, so we refer to our boat as She, The Little Girl, Young Lady and other girlie terms of endearment. One Sunday morning, gulping coffee in the cockpit and wondering if maybe I should be in church, I decided that I was in a way. I was attending Our Lady. Our Lady of the Broad Reach. The title held a certain poetry for me. I decided that my spiritual needs could be well served while navigating the waters off Navy Pier, and that I should put aside all thoughts of being elsewhere.
(Unless it's here:)
And the nickname stuck. So here you are. At a blog called Our Lady of the Broad Reach. Thanks for coming.
1 comment:
Being somewhat new to boating, I must ask why you have that big stick thingie in the middle of your boat? I see that you hang some kind of sheet on it, for drying I'd guess? Don't they make commercial dryers that you could utilize? Although, I have heard that sailboaters on the whole, are a miserly lot, and that since the air is free, so should everything else be, hence the drying thing.Also, what the hell shape is the bed that the sheet fits on? Is it perhaps a Bed by Bear? That would explain a lot.
Your sister and I are enjoying our boat "Ursa Major", and also like that we can pass under bridges that don't require the raising of said equipment, and thus don't incur the wrath of the motorist, who is shaking his first because he can't get to the Starbux for his third Latte in a timely manner.
We love the blog, and look forward to many more entries from you. As I read it, I get a warm, fuzzy feeling, somewhat akin to all the warm, fuzzy feelings I've gotten from being a veteran guest aboard Pretty Smitty, enhanced by the imbibing of some grape-based product that you seem to have an inexhaustable supply of.
-Bear
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