Sailing Off the Hamptons, Long Island, New York

Saturday-Sunday, July 16-17

While Auggie was being loved to smithereens with Jeannie, I was having a weekend full of laugh-till-your-belly-hurts moments on a 35-foot sailboat called the Renaud Argenté. As we were getting started out of the harbor, our Austrian captain, Wolfgang, handed over the steering wheel to Karin. Within a few brief minutes, Karin had run us aground on a sandbar. She will never live this down. J

But that wasn’t the only funny moment of the weekend. We stayed up late, drank way too much, grilled yummy food, danced to the Gipsy Kings, coated ourselves with minimum 10 layers of sunblock, and then got stranded on a small, nearby island after our dear captain ran out of gas in the dinghy’s outboard motor. 

Me and two other brave and strong women rowed the dinghy back to the boat, aided in the final stretch by a very kind Frenchman, his wife and granddaughter, who towed us in their dinghy the final bit to our boat. We were plotting the way to shore in the dinghy against choppy water and strong current to go and retrieve the others, when that very kind Frenchman came back in his dinghy and towed me in our dinghy to shore to get the five other folks from our boat and Wolfgang’s friends who had rafted with us. We rescued them! 

It was close to 7.00 pm by the time we were all back on our boats, and we still had to sail back to the marina across the harbor. Aided by a strong wind, we got back just fine, though windblown and covered with that incomparable mix of salt, sweat and sunblock, desperately in need of a shower. 

The drive home to Moonachie from the Hamptons was quick and free of bad traffic. We fell into bed exhausted but still giggling from a fantastic start to this trip. 

If every stop on the trip is as much fun as this one, then this will be a spectacular trip, indeed!