Tim, I was just kidding about the fleas.
You travel so much I can see why you wouldn't want to do a lot of unnecessary driving. But most people don't travel so much and I can't understand why they don't come down to the beach just to see what's going on.
Money is always a problem for the organizers. So even if you didn't want to sail you might buy a hot dog or contribute to some other sort of fund raiser.
There are lots of reasons to hang out with sailors that don't involve getting your feet wet. At Gilligan's it was a hoot attending the fish fry and listening to the war stories from those that fought the surf (a few lost that battle!). And, I had a very nice dinner, as well. Another time I remember hearing about some guy dragging his boat through mangroves at 1:00 in the morning...
Well if I'm going to take the time and spend the money, I'm going to bring my boat and race for sure. While you were doing the beach patrol at Gilligans, I was flying to Tel Aviv.
Right now as I type this I am sitting in the Atlanta pilot loung headding to Dubai tonight, so I might get a shot at picking up some Camel Fleas, no doubt! Flying 5 on, 2 off doesn't leave me much time for sailing, I haven't even been out in my back yard in two weeks. I just hope my mast is still up when I get home from this trip! Some big storm we had last night in Sebring! I've got the boat all tied down to trees...so as long as the trees don't fall down on it...
Murph, I agree about racing against better tallent, seems everytime I race I learn something. But us guys who are not -retired- don't have as much time as Pete does to sail, or go to the beach, etc.
All we really need is just two things: More time off and more money!
