This winter in europe never seems to end....

Lived here all my life and can't wait to escape. Brogger is soooo spot on 6 months of stupid heat and insane humidity is nuts!

Grass, fence, greener.

apply lots of sunscreen and lubricate internals ... what heat?

Maybe. We'll see who is whining this weekend and who isn't.

If that don't work, they've got this cool thing in just about every structure here: air conditioning.

Seems at least once every summer the news down here broadcasts that several people up north have died from the heat in their homes. that has got to totally suck...

And God invented the summer in S FL for scuba diving or flying.

As one skydiver friend told me,

there are two places it's always cold in Florida: 5,000 feet ASL and -120 feet

I regularly wear a full wetsuit to dive under 60 feet, where temps seem to average about 71 degrees F year round.

And I trust his comment on the 5,000 ASL thing. I was too busy crapping my pants to notice it was that cold at 17,000 + ASL

16 Celsius, Bft 5, clear and sunny.

One of the advantages of Northern Europe, you can just open a window for that cool breeze to come in, no air-conditioning necessary!
(As long as that window is just above a radiator though, you don't want to freeze to death!).

So,

I started this topic with complaining about the winter and the cold in Holland and it all ended in whining and complaining about the hotness and humidity in Florida.

It was fun and I got rid off one or two stories and learned a lot.

Conclusion: the grass is always greener elswhere. There is no sailing paradise. Adam, our first man, definitly made the wrong choice.

Adam had no choice, that game was totally rigged.

Picking up our Infusion in 18 days, and counting..

About 10 years ago I contemplated a career change and a move to Florida so I could sail more. I was one of the last two candidates for an engineering position with a natural gas company and having had a background in gas service engineering, I was a shoe-in. The company was a satellite office run out of Port Saint Lucie and I was expecting a plane ticket for a final interview. That ticket never showed up and my calls went unreturned. The parent company had apparently been busted on $30 million in consumer fraud and was shutting down satellite offices as it restructured. A couple of weeks later, a hurricane came ashore centered over the same area. I'm glad that interview process took as long as it did. Had all of this taken place two months earlier I probably would have just relocated, then lost my job, and had to run from a hurricane. That was the last time I considered moving to Florida.

We sailors can develop a

divine

intuition and some of us have a gardian angel too; all induced by wind and water.

Stay pure.

I think some of the issue is in FL and other

tropical

areas, there are too many potential sailing days leading to sailor apathy...

Well, it's only blowing 4 Beaufort and 16 C with sunny skies. I think I'll just sail next week...

In higher lattitudes, the sailing season is so short, if you miss one weekend, you've missed about 10% of the sailing season...

Congrats, any details?

In your case your proximity to the Petten nuclear research reactor may have something to do with that 😉

L.O.L. Dennis,

No, it has nothing to do with The Reactor next door.

My theory is that sailors have to be able

to let go on the sea and in the wind

. It is something like the grounding or sinking (martial art) in the earthground ashore.

This letting-go, but controlled (YOU ARE NOT A FLABBY PUPPET), leads to an intuition in order to act when things go wrong and you have to act.

(I studied 25 years chinese martial art and also there in combat the same applies.)

The guardian angel is a different story. That's the bonus which you get on the end when the intuition has extended to other situations then the sailing-situation.

For everybody's clearness this all has to do with the intrinsic forces beyond the normal

keeping your balance

thing.

Are you still there? If you see me sailing on the Northsea you understand that I'm not

hovering

or just blethering.

Between waves there's no time for hocus-pocus!

Northsea, I do understand you.

You're talking about the

mind-like-water

state that allows you to act in tune with everything around you without needing to plan for every wave. This highly aware and balanced mental state is the plan and your actions flow from that.
I know the feeling (I do meditate but don't do martial arts myself), that same state works wonders for fast action computer games too 😉 I think it speeds up your reactions because it feels almost as if time slows down to allow you to react instantly without thinking about it.

Dennis

I've been in the Midwest US (Wisconsin) for about 4 yrs now.
And after 4 yrs, people still think I was nuts for moving FROM TX to WI!

That was from the Gulf coast of TX.

I still don't miss all that heat and humidity 9 months of the year.
Sledding is pretty cool also

So, is it after all still the lack off seasons???

Can you endure any time of heat, coldness, rain, snow, as long as you know that it will end in a reasonable time?

That was my motivation for this thread. I was complaining about this

reasonable winter-time

, now happening in Europe.

Jokingly, I say I don't go outside in August. It is almost true!

I think there has been a hurricane or two that has hit you state as well.

Huc i ranes hit TX also! Ike was my last beofre leaving the area.

Yes, we call that

urban renewal

, and it gets rid of the shoddy buildings and trailer parks

I was just in Islamorada for the weekend, freezing my butt off! It was 75 but blowing 15+ gusts every day, Friday-Sunday. The water has cooled off so it was chilly, I just wish we had that wind back in January for Tradewinds!! I spent the entire weekend sitting in a lawn chair whatching my youngest get some one on one with a springboard diving instructor, at the Founder's Park pool.

Chip and Barb, where have you moved to? I walked over to the hut hoping to rent a Wave or something, but everything is gone, except the hut, which was locked up.

We did amble over to the Islander for dinner on Saturday, when Lora Lie's was too full, I saw a bunch of Waves over there, and one Getaway, but it was about 7pm with nobody around to ask.

Is that where you guys (Barb and Chip) are now?

Funny, when I was growing up in New Hampshire, we were outside in 10 degrees or less, playing pond hockey all day and well into the night (it gets dark at 4:30pm up theya') and I never felt cold. But now after the past 15 years in Sebring, with 98 degrees and 98 percent humidity from May through November, well, every time it gets below 70, I'm freezing my butt off! As I told my wife Saturday night,

What a pussy I have become! I've got a jacket on, in the Keys!

The Islander Watersports is run by Dennis Green. I think Chip and Barb's rental outfit at Founders suffered the same fate as the Tradewinds regatta (insurance wrangling with the park management).

Still no sailing here... Easter this year was colder than Christmas... when does this ever stop?

Yesterday the Tampa TV weather man was talking about how this past March was one of the coldest on record in Florida, the coldest in the past 81 years, and this March avg. temp. (61F) was colder than December, January and February, which were all in the high to mid 60's on average!

this march was also some of the best wind of the year (here in the tampa area).

Pretty normal winter up here. Still snow on the ground, but it's disappearing quickly. We've been spoiled for the past few years. I think one out of the last ten has been really brutal where it was below zero F for a month with it bottoming at -40F for a week. Our lakes still have a couple feet of ice on them

I'm sure your snow up there somehow leads to our fresh water down here, so let it snow!

And don't pee on it or we'll have funny water in about 10,000 years when it gets here.

Arjan you are a pussy!

Put some layers on (wetsuit,drysuit), buy some good handgloves and get on sailing. Its a marvelous NO-wind around 20 knot.
I have sailed these weeks atleast 4 times.