Last fall employees at my office were looking to donate something special to our United Way charity auction. It was mostly managers and VPs who stepped up to donate, but I wanted to show off a bit, and so with Fred’s permission I donated a sunset cruise on our boat. Well the auction was before Christmas, and so the weather was cold, and soon after I broke my foot — the timing of everything was terrible. However, it turned out that the woman who won the cruise had also broke her foot, and so we were good to wait for spring.

In preparation I wanted to have a variety of drinks to serve, at least two kinds of snacks, and course that would allow some nice easy tacking.  Those were my basic requirements.  I was a bit nervous as usual, but much less nervous than I would have been a few years ago.  We motored out and quickly got set up to do a nice broad reach out to Redfish Island. If you leave late in the afternoon there is usually time to sail out there, have a quick snack, and sail back just in time for sunset.

Watch out for this motor boat destroyer!  It’s unmarked, and continues to ruin boats.

Unfortunately, I was laid off just a few days before the cruise, so we decided to opt for sandwiches and chips for a more economic snack.

Always have an emergency blanket aboard! (For Tex)

Linda and her husband were amazing guests, and were very keen to learn about sailing.  I tried not to bore them with any of the ways to calculate apparent wind, and finding your center of effort, but I did encourage them to pull a few lines.

All in all it was a big success. Now that the weather is warming up I hope we’ll be hosting many more sunset cruises this year.