Day People Versus Date People

New Bern, NC

We invited our grandson Nick to come visit and take a day sail this weekend.  Nick is a soldier stationed at Fort Bragg.   I checked the weather, Sataturday looked like zero wind, and Sunday 10-15 knots.  I told Nick that Sunday would be better.

But Nick is a date person.   He had plans for Sunday to get errands done in preparation for Monday.   He came for a Saturday sail.  Well, the forecast were right, we were skunked on the weather.  Zero wind, hot, humid and unpleasant.   Poor Nick, he didn't get a good day.

You see, there is an impedance mismatch between boaters and "ordinary" people.  Boaters (not just cruisers) look at the weather, and pick a good day.   Other people look at the calendar, choose a day by other criteria and hope that the weather is good.

It is not just Nick, we encounter this problem all the time when we make plans to share things with non-boaters.   They use calendars, we use weather reports.   When we traveled the country by car last spring, we kept our boaters habits.  We were going to visit friends.  When would be be there?  Say, somewhere between 1 and 3 weeks, is that OK?   No, that's not OK, our friends lives were dominated by calendars.  They had to fit us into available slots on their schedules.

Many times we have invited friends to share passages with us, both offshore and inland.  9 times out of 10 it doesn't work because their schedules are too busy to allow spontaneity.

Is that part of the magic that makes cruisers so lucky, and that makes so many others dream about cruising some day?   Slavery to the calendar is slavery indeed.