Four Things My Dad Did That I'm Too Chicken To.

Here you go, Tillerman.

1) Take the family cruising down the West Coast of Mexico in a thirty-two foot boat for seven weeks. Wow, what an amazing trip that was. I was about eleven or so, but still remember so many parts of it as if we did it yesterday. Would I do this with my family? Hard to imagine. Too soft. Too busy. Too I don't know.

2) Take the family (save for my sister) on the Guadalupe Island Race--a notoriously wild one. This was the three leg version: San Diego to Guadalupe, Guadalupe to Ensenada, Ensenada to San Diego. On the first leg we managed to blow out both the three quarter and the ounce and a half chutes. One just went bang, the other managed to shred itself on the masthead instruments somehow. On leg two, most of the other boats broke something and/or dropped out, and we filled the boat with so much water that I was floating in the lee quarterberth.

3) Send my son, me, 12 or 13 at the time, the smallest of the crew, up the mast to retrieve the bits of the blown out spinnaker. I made it about to the spreaders before just about crapping my pants when I looked down to see the boat swinging to and fro in the heavy seas.

4) Leave my daughter, my eighteen year old sister at the time, home alone while the rest of us were gallivanting around some rock three hundred miles offshore. Upon returning home, little brother found all the evidence of what all had happened. From stories leaked by the neighbors years later it sounds like it was quite the party.

My sister still won't say how the banana ended up smeared on the ceiling.