Creative Nonfiction by Andrea Badgley
It crackles: sweet, ruby red, and shellac smooth. When I was a little girl I wanted a candy apple red Corvette. One of the old models, with the sweeping lines and the chrome bumpers — not the modern ones so covered in plastic they look like sedans. I have no idea why I wanted a … Continue reading Candy apple red
Sailors have a reputation for colorful language, usually in relation to swearing and storytelling. I admit, this is one of the aspects of sailing that tickles me most: the vocabulary. The terminology is filled with unfamiliar words that I’m slowly learning — words that sound old and nautical, like shroud and sheet, halyard and cleat. In our … Continue reading The butt cleat
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
