On Sun, 25 Mar 2007 16:21:50 -0600, "KLC Lewis"
wrote:



Yah, Long Beach California was that way too -- like New Zealand, only not as
pretty. Boats stay in the water year round and you can pretty much go
sailing any time you want. Therefore, since there is no sense of urgency
about it, people have a "Manana" attitude. You can always go sailing
tomorrow -- today, there's beer to be drunk!

As for keeping the boat in the water year round here...

It's not all that uncommon for people, at the coldest period of the year, to
DRIVE across Green Bay. Ice gets to be a couple of feet thick. Yes, these
are stupid people, but they still do it.

Enough said. I now understand.

I've seen old movie footage of the Russians laying railway tracks
across some lake in Russia (possibly Lake Baikal) but for me, to even
walk on frozen water in Beijing was initially a rather strange and
novel experience.

We left Turkey for northern Greece at the end of January 2004. We
couldn't understand why we never saw another sailboat until we saw a
Swedish boat when nearing Athens a couple of months later. The weather
was OK if you kept an eye on it but we experienced probably the worst
seas ever in the Northern Aegean - short and steep. Once, we were
anchored in an enclosed bay on the southern coast of Lesbos, had winds
of over 60 knots and raced on deck expecting the mast to have crashed
down only to find great chunks of solid ice from the spreaders on the
cabin top. If I translate that to your cruising area, I suppose I
wouldn't be too far wrong.

Thanks for educating me,
Peter