I Love Sailing

And if I had the opportunity, I would do it much more. I do often wish that I could do more than sail on the local lake, or just off shore.

Then I get slapped back into reality.

During the worst of the storm, with the engine dead, one sail shredded and the 70-mph wind off the Massachusetts coast shrieking in the rigging, the 33-foot ketch Sara Gamp rolled wearily onto its side and seemed ready to succumb, the skipper said.

Visibility was about 100 yards in cold rain and mountainous seas. The slender Virginia-based vessel had been pounded for hours by the nor'easter that enveloped it this week. And its 74-year-old captain, a veteran Washington mariner who already had been swept off the deck once, was cold, bruised and hallucinating.