((I've been distracted, so here are the next
   two chapters. Hope you are having a pleasant
   Spring 2005.))                                                     

CHAPTER TWO
Trading Up

Skipper's Log
Miami Florida
June 1980

As you begin to feel comfortable at the helm, all sailors dream of expanding horizons, bigger boats and deeper seas. My first passport to those blue water daydreams was 'New Wave' a forty-four foot sloop that I bought in Miami in 1980. It was at the beginning of the end of another relationship, and looking back I wonder if I didn't buy the bigger boat as a way literally to escape when the time came. That is a powerful lure for restless men in tight spots: the potential of sailing away from responsibility and around the world.

(Continuing the sailing book that I started on March 30 2005. this is Chapter 0ne)

Skipper's Log
Hampton Bays, Long Island
August 1976

Sailing came into my life relatively late, in my 20's. Coming literally from the wrong side of the tracks, a post-war, working-class development north of the L.I.R.R. tracks in West Babylon, the feeling growing up was that sailing was reserved for the privileged kids from towns like Babylon on the Island's South Shore. Like the tastes of champagne and caviar, I wondered what sailing would be like, envious of the dashing preppies with sun-tanned grace, blonde sisters and waterfront homes.
Looking back, the boys were poseurs, clerks from Abercrombie and Fitch. The surfer/sailor style ideal lost its appeal for me when I bought my first motorcycle and leather jacket. But the ocean's attraction never waned.