Of Valentines and Regattas

Another weekend has come and gone and likewise another Valentine’s Day. The weekend brought yet another regatta to Coconut Grove. This time it was a Melges regatta. This was the second of three Melges regattas in the Miami Winter Melges series. Approximately 60 teams gathered to compete in the Melges 20 and 24 divisions. The Melges is a state of the art racing dinghy. I told a friend about the event and he said that racing dinghies provided a relatively inexpensive way to enjoy sailing. HaHa! The Melges 20 comes with a price tag of $47,000 and the 24 $67,000. That is, of course before spending thousands on new Mylar/Kevlar sails and all the other high tech upgrades these folks put in their boats.

Valentine’s Day was special (tongue in cheek humor!). Running out of clothes--time to do laundry. So Claudia heads for the laundry room at Dinner Key Marina. Since we were also running out of rum, certainly a more serious problem than clothes, Peter heads off to the liquor store. After such exertions, we didn’t feel like cooking on the boat so we had lunch at Scotty’s Landing. This visit was not equal to our last. Of course, maybe Valentine’s Day is not equal to Peter’s birthday. All was not bad on the culinary front. We decided to try to duplicate the Tartare de Saumon that was so good at the Bouchon du Grove. Our attempt was aided by logging onto a couple of French cooking sites where we watched instructional video clips. The result is that we have added another recipe to our repertoire.

The other day, a French couple arrived in the mooring field. The Sailing Club staff had a bit of trouble communicating with them. Enter Peter, the angel of mercy. A bit of translation service and the French boat was tied to a mooring ball. Actually, the French couple was probably able to speak adequate English. They’ve made it all the way down here from New York, partly on the ICW. That’s a feat that would be virtually impossible without a working knowledge of English.