Sailing with George and Vicky: A Daysail with Jie and Her Friends (& Father's Day)

This photo reminds me of the Sesame Street song...

♫♬ "One of These Things is Not Like the Others" ♬♫

Throughout my life, I've been blessed with friendships that span the generations. Many many years ago, that was with the "Men's Brotherhood" at the church I grew up in - where I (as a young whippersnapper) was on friendly terms with a number of really cool WWII vets my dad hung out with. While these types of friendships have continued to be a presence in my life, as I have aged, the intergenerational friendships have now swung into the other direction... more towards younger folks.

A couple of months ago, I did a headshot for Jie (a former lab intern on our floor who's now working for our field organization), and during that headshot session I learned that she did a photography minor while in college, but that she had not been out for a photoshoot in a while. So a week or two after that, I invited her along and to make a long story short, we have become photography buddies (going on small excursions during the spring to try and find interesting things to photograph). Throughout this time, she has introduced me to a widening circle of her friends, boyfriends of friends, and the like, and she has met Vicky a couple of times.

We had originally planned to do some studio work today with Sam (another photographer), but as the week wore on and I realized it was going to be a great day for sailing -- and that John had to work until 3:00PM on Father's Day -- I was able to talk them in to trading a day of studio shooting for a day of sailing. I could kill two birds with one stone - show them Seas The Day and introduce them to sailing, and then meet up with John for Father's Day (saving him a mad dash down the NJ TPK) when he got off work.

Joining me on the launch is Zubair, Sam, Jie and Tao. (Sam, Jie and Tao are colleagues from my company, Zubair it turns out, is a customer.)

I will say that we had more photographic firepower on this trip than any other on Seas The Day (5 cell phones and 3 larger cameras). They seemed to be in use all the time and I only ended up taking a few photos with my Fuji.

Fortunately, we also had Tao along (who should consider a career in modeling).

We had lots of possibilities for photos - posed and candid. I'll let the photos tell the rest of the story. The sailing was nice, we had both sails out and enough wind filled them to make for some good photos. The breeze was light, however, and we didn't make much headway.

The wind was spotty... we ended up pulling in the sails and motoring for a while and, eventually, it cooled off and started looking like rain so we headed back and caught the launch.

After a brief tour of the club and a chance to admire the view from the deck, I said goodbye to my crew and met John at the KYC bar. After a quick drink, we had a wonderful steak dinner at Neil Michael's Steakhouse.

The only bad part of the day was the trip home after dinner. The storms we were warned about (expected to come at 6:00 PM) were right on time and it was a monsoon that of course stretched the entire course of the NJ Turnpike.