Creative Nonfiction by Andrea Badgley
I think I may be a lost cause. My day job is with Automattic, the company behind the WordPress.com software that I and millions of others use for blogging. I am doing a great job at not working while I’m on vacation: I turned off Slack and email notifications on my phone, ensuring I don’t … Continue reading I’m on vacation, so I started a new blog: Andrea Sails
The week after Christmas, the four of us are traveling south to visit grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins down in Florida. While we are there, my husband and I are taking a two-day sailing course. To use my favorite new word from my friend Krista Stevens, I’m terricited about the course. Our packets of … Continue reading Studying to sail
In the beginning of the summer, we bought a little wooden yawl. We knew when we bought it that it wouldn’t hold our family of four. So the most practical thing to do, since we can’t all fit in the first boat, is to build a second boat, right? So that the two people who aren’t in … Continue reading Because one boat wasn’t enough
Our daughter gave up her seat in the sailboat this past weekend, and I took it. It was likely to be our last chance to sail before it gets too cold. Already it was chilly for a small, wet boat: sweatshirt and long pants weather rather than sweatshirts and swimsuits. “I don’t know,” my husband said. “There’s a wind … Continue reading Swirly sail
This summer has been brutally hot. The past few times we’ve gone to Claytor Lake to sail, there has been a burning sun and no wind. This morning, though, it was different. At 7:00 AM, my husband and I swung out of the driveway, pulling our little wooden yawl behind the car. Our coffee swirled in … Continue reading Sweatshirts and swimsuits
My first attempt at skippering our 13 foot wooden yawl was a disaster. The wind on Pamlico Sound in the Outer Banks of North Carolina was stiff when I took the tiller and the main sheet (the line that trims the mainsail). When the wind is blowing and the boat is tipping, things happen fast. … Continue reading Sailing (and life) lesson: know where you want to go.
