No controversy

John, Deb, Tj, Nancy, David circa October 2013

We had friends at Oak Harbor Marina. So we sailed 1000 miles north and spent the summer. When the summer ended we left Oak Harbor to visit a friend in Kent Narrows. We left Kent Narrows to visit friends in Annapolis. We met some new friends there as well. We sailed on to Severn River to meet some friends and, as it turned out, dodge a hurricane. At Hospital point we joined up with friends from the summer before and headed down the ICW. We stopped in Oriental and some friends caught up with us. They caught up with us again in Wrightsville Beach. We stopped in North Myrtle Beach to see friends. We had no friends in Buckstown, but they invited us in for Thanksgiving dinner anyway. And so we made some new friends. We were invited to Sisters Creek in Jacksonville to meet some friends. While pinned to the dock waiting for the wind to let up we made friends with others also stuck. Since then we have played hopscotch down the ICW with a couple of them. They passed us when we spent an extra day in Titusville to meet a new friend, have lunch, and show him the boat. We caught up with our Sisters Creek friends here in Vero Beech where we stopped to meet some old friends from the lake back in IL. When we leave here it will be on to Stewart to, you guessed it, catch up with some friends. When, eventually, we make it to far Southern FL there will be some old and very dear friends already there.

We have been “out here” for just over two years. Yet nearly everywhere we go there are people we know, and our itinerary is as determined by who is where as it is by the weather. Which is pretty amazing considering that the majority of our friends are gypsies constantly on the move. It is even more amazing when considering that many people, including my wife, don't consider me to be particularly “user friendly”. Oh, I am a comfortable public speaker and, given the right kind of get-together, will enjoy slinging stories with the best of them. But I am pretty much useless at parties, "mingling" being something at which I have neither skill nor interest. I am also not particularly fond of being in closed in places with masses of people. A small venue with some live music is about my limit.

And, in virtually all cases, I am pretty much expressly forbidden (for very good reasons, I might add) from jumping into discussions focused on politics, religion, sex, or money. (Actually, any talk of politics will include religion, sex, and money. Any talk of religion will include politics, sex, and money. And any talk of sex...well, you get the idea.) Deb categorizes most of my views on these kinds of issues as being simply “off the reservation.” There are no labels that fit, no political parties whose views I share, and apparently no gods who will tolerate me, or me them.

See what she means?

So, the fact that we have friends scattered all over this part of the Atlantic coast with several more in the Islands, says a lot about the cruising tribe. Some of them are even aware of my “off the reservation” status, but don't mind having me around anyway. Which is kind of understandable since, I suspect, a few of them are nearly as far off the currently acceptable ideological beaten paths as I am. Not that we talk about it, even then. Given a world as angry, self-righteous, and violent as the one we are currently sailing through, being a bit cautious about what one says to whom is a pretty good survival skill.

Instead we will talk about anchoring techniques, weather, routing, sail rig, and boat maintenance.

No controversy there.