It has been a challenging week – Debbie had to move her 85-year-old dad into assisted living, and I’d gotten a bit stressed trying to wrangle a couple of big projects at work – so we made a beeline for the boat Friday afternoon after work to see if we could get a little sailing in, followed by dinner back at the buoy.

Winds were light and westerly when we arrived, and warm — about 80 degrees at lake level. The water temperature is now 65 degrees, and warming daily. Now that we’re in our seventh year of sailing Splendido, we have a dialed-in checklist we follow to get out quickly and get the sails up. With partly cloudy skies and what I call “Tahoe Monsoon” conditions (high pressure over the West and thunderstorms forming in the afternoons), we motored out and found a gentle breeze to set sail. We started by shaking out the reef we’d been sailing with so far this season, but later on, when the canyon winds kicked up with gusts in excess of 20 knots, things just got uncomfortable and noisy, so we turned her into the wind, put the first reef back in, and it was smooth sailing after that. I poured Debbie a nice glass of Lava Cap Grenache from a recent road trip we did to Amador County, CA  (check it out if you haven’t – it’s like Napa 40 years ago), and I grabbed my trusty Clausthaler N/A beer and settled in for a fun afternoon. We cruised around McKinney and Hurricane bays, and were surprised how few boats were out. Later on, we saw four or five more sails come out, including Tahoe Cruz, with a deck full of tourists enjoying the ride.

Back on the hook at about 8:15 p.m., Debbie went below and whipped up a delicious caprese salad with roasted chicken and a balsamic dressing and a fresh loaf of crusty bread. As she prepared dinner, I tidied up on deck and worked on the lazy jacks/lazy bag that’ve gotten a bit out of whack. Afterwards, we buttoned up Splendido and rowed the dinghy back to shore in the gathering darkness, grateful for the chance to sail away from the anxiety of life’s changes and challenges, at least for an afternoon.

Fair winds and smooth sailing. DB