Adventures in Boating

Kevin turned the big 3-6 yesterday. He had been talking about getting a little 2 person sailboard for months, but I know he would never buy it for himself. Kevin never wants to spend money on himself--he has to be coaxed into buying socks when his old socks develop holes! (I don't quite understand this--I'm not a huge shopper, but if something is getting threadbare, I suffer no guilt when I replace it, and oh my, shoes, I never suffer guilt when it comes to buying shoes!) Anyway, I found a cute little blue and white used Dolphin sailboard at a local boat shop and had arranged for it to be delivered on Friday while Kevin was at work. I had planned to set it up in the driveway and adorn it with a huge red bow so he would be surprised when he returned from work on Friday night. Unfortunately, there was a mixup with the delivery van, so the boat ended up being delivered on Thursday evening when Kevin was already home. In the end, it was probably a good thing...that boat was HEAVY and Kevin was very helpful about unloading his own birthday gift! Also, I have never been around any kind of sailboard/sailboat thing in the past, and they are complicated! I would never have been able to figure out how to put it all together anyway....Kevin would have arrived home to a jumble of sail and mast parts in the driveway, and me shouting "Surprise, I got you a sailboard puzzle for your birthday!"
After rain and thunderstorms on Saturday, we were thrilled that Sunday was bright, sunny and breezy. Kevin rigged up the sail, and after slapping on some sunscreen, we headed out onto the lake. The wind was perfect, and we made it all the way out to a distant island in about 30 minutes. We capsized once, but it wasn't a big deal. We had our lifejackets on and it wasn't too hard to flip the boat up again. At that point, we were feeling very self congratulatory about our mad sailing skills...and then the wind just stopped blowing. I have horrible motion sickness, but when the sailboat was zipping along, I had no issues. Once we just started bobbing around with no forward motion, I became violently ill. Not once, not twice, but three times. I ended up sliding off of the boat into the water, grabbing onto a rope and directing Kevin to just tow me, because the pitching of the boat was too unbearable. We made quite a lovely picture, I'm sure...Kevin desperately whipping the sail around, trying to catch a breeze, and me miserably trailing along behind the boat! After about 3 hours, we finally drifted close enough to our house that we both swam the sailboard back to shore, much to the amusement of our neighbors. Oh, and remember how I nonchalantly mentioned that we had slapped some sunscreen on? That was a bit of foreshadowing...my application of sunscreen was patchy at best, so between that, the 4 hours out in the midday sun and my natural deathly pallor, I am a freaky, streaky, red and white zebra of a mess right now! Kevin's skin is naturally darker than mine, so although he got a little burned yesterday, today he is all brown and healthy looking, damn him! Not that you can tell from my rehashing of our sailing story, but we did actually have a lot of fun out on the water too. Now I know that in the future, I must take Dramamine and slather on the sunscreen, and that it wouldn't be a bad idea to check the forecast before we decide to sail too far from shore!
Kevin's birthday was capped off with a veggie burger, watermelon and corn on the cob picnic on the patio. We also went to see "Get Smart" that evening--we laughed so hard, it was insanely funny! And nothing could make a stinging sunburn feel better than sitting in an aggressively air conditioned theater with a big bucket of icy cold Diet Coke! Now I have 4 days to recover before the insanity of the 4th of July weekend. I'm sure there will be more sailing and the neighbors have threatened us with, I mean invited us to their annual pig roast...yikes, I gotta go take a nap now!