This Summer has taught me a lot about being thankful — and about focusing on the half full view of the glass of life and paying less attention to the half empty view. I may have mentioned in the past that although I’ve been an avid sailor for well over 35 years, this is the first time in my life that I have lived in a place where I could leave my home and be out on the water under sail in about an hour. Almost all of my experience since my very early years on Hobie Cats and 18-22 foot monohulls has been on chartered boats in the 35- to 45-foot range with wheels, inboards, self-furling headsails, self-tailing winches, great instrumentation, etc. You name a city on any coast in the U.S., and I’ve probably chartered a boat out of a harbor within a few hundred miles of it. Fewer harbors, but the same with large inland lakes — Michigan, Pontchartrain, Tahoe, Mead, etc.
After semi-retiring in Nashville and fully retiring a few years later, I was traveling a lot less and had fewer opportunities to “tack on” a day or two to business trips to do some sailing. Last year, I thought, gee, I’ve only sailed on a small inland lake [Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia] once quite a few years ago, but maybe there’s something on Percy Priest Lake or Old Hickory Lake I might like. Well, by early June I was a PPYC member and Club Boat Program member, and the next month I was a volunteer LATH Skipper. I have “re-learned” and learned a great deal about small lake sailing, working with tillers, “hanking on” jibs [I didn’t even remember that term until I was reviewing John Thomason’s Club Boat Check Run procedure,] etc. Plus, I was lucky enough early on to meet some of the nicest, most welcoming people in our club who were eager to share their local knowledge with me and let me sail with them until I got my “lake legs” [I guess one would say, instead of “sea legs.”]
Having had one of the best sailing summers of my life last year, and now going through what we’ve had to endure so far this year, I’m “chomping at the bit” [to use an analogy from horseback-riding when I was growing up in a small rural town about an hour North of New Orleans] and ready to get some sailing in. And I’m staying focused on the half full view — what a great year last year was and how great this year can yet be before cold weather sets in.
Don’t forget to check the Coronavirus Updates page regularly for the latest information on how that plan relates specifically to PPYC [Link below.]
Please Note. We’ve added a special Coronavirus Updates page to the Member Resources section. We will post the most current PPYC-specific information we have about the Coronavirus situation there. You can access it through the Member Resources Menu, by clicking the link in the top banner on this page, or by clicking here: Coronavirus Updates
Charles Jones, Communications Director
communications@ppyc.org
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