Sailing With Zara

Had a good time sailing last week, with a former business associate, Zara Haimo, and her friends. Zara recently bought a 36′ boat and takes it out on occasion. The four of us (Zara, Ursula, her son Jonathan, and me) sailed out to Alcatraz, up to Marin, out the Golden Gate and back. The winds were modest, and the boat handled really responsively.

I loved sailing as a kid — we didn’t go out very often, as my dad had powered craft mostly.  One summer, though, he was asked by a physician at the Navy base to “look after” the doctor’s 70′ schooner.  Dad and a few of his Navy buddies, took that baby out on the Atlantic (from Chicoteague Island) and it was an amazing ride.  I still remember getting seasick and learning the lesson, the hard way, about not peeing overboard on the windward side of the boat.

Zara’s 36 footer can be adequately handled by one person.  And the electronics are amazing — depth, local traffic, time to destination, wind direction, speed (both thru the water and relative to land!).  There’s even an auto pilot.

Here’s 11 year old Jonathan at the helm: