We went sailing with Kiwanis as members and spouses of the Williamsburg Kiwanis Club set sail on the York River on a trip donated by Williamsburg Charter Sails to the Kiwanis Foundation. Its president, Gary Ripple, reported that the fund has grown to $405,000 and yields $20,000 annually for key club projects. Gary is a big jokester who always has the latest and greatest story to tell, even if his wife Susan has heard it 20 times.
“We had a speaker at Kiwanis last week whose topic was sex. But he disguised it by promoting it instead as a talk about sailing. I bumped into his wife the next day and told her what a good talk he gave. She interrupted me. ‘Oh, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The first time he tried it, he got sick. The second time, he lost his hat.’”
Record Speed
Beer broke out as Thom MacDonnell, a world-class sailor, took the helm for an upriver leg that went under the Coleman Bridge. A brisk west wind required that we run solely on a reefed main. When the winds died down, we put out the genoa and picked up speed as well as heeling. On the reverse run, Jim Geiger got the boat heeling to 35 degrees and set a record speed of 16.2 mph.
Caught Speeding
We got to talking about speeding tickets, and Susan had the best story. “I was driving this very old man around whom I look after. He sits in the back seat and is very chatty, perhaps too chatty. I got stopped in the city for speeding, and the man piped up loudly, ‘Your hubband gonna get mad now! Your hubband gonna get mad!’ That wasn’t very helpful, especially since he kept saying it as the cop approached my car. But the cop turned out to be Artie!” It was Artie Bornschein, a Williamsburg Police officer who’s also a fellow Kiwanis member. He let her off with a warning, “This one’s for Gary.”
Lottery Idea
Settling the family estate can be tricky, but Mary Beth Murphy told us about their solution. “There are six of us siblings and not all of us get along well. My mother decided to settle the estate with a lottery. She listed everything in the house with a number, and each of us gets to choose as we work through the lottery. One, two, three, four, five, six. Then one, two, three, etc.” It’s kind of like the NFL draft, and very equitable.
Let’s Go Sail
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