… what people are thinking. With Hurricane Katrina bearing down, a family goes boating off of Florida’s Gulf Coast, and now - surprise - they’re missing. If I don’t sound sympathetic, it’s because many people in my family have been sailors for at least 30 years. My Uncle George sailed around the world; my mom and her husband, and my Aunt Betty and Uncle Ray sail (each couple in their own boat, of course) up and down the Intracoastal Waterway from Virginia to Florida almost every year; they generally wait till hurricane season is over to go, but during the summer they’re constantly sailing the Chesapeake Bay.

Someone asked my mom once what they do when a hurricane is coming. “We get out of the way,” she said. They certainly don’t go sailing for pleasure in its path!

I do hope they’re all okay. But people really need to understand that boats are *dangerous* and you need to learn about good seamanship as well as about how the boat works.

This entry is filed under Hurricanes, Sailing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
 Print This Post