Life around Ashley is like life inside a tornado…not that I’ve ever been in one but that’s the closest description I can think of.

As I type this, she’s here in my kitchen, which never gets used for anything more than a steak and some steamed veggies ora sandwich… and she’s cooking Coq au Vin for 14 crew for the race to Key West! I wonder if the crew has any idea how much she goes out of her way for them…probably not.

Oh, and I should mention that it is now near 2300hrs and she flew in from SF on Thurs. night at near midnight, and went up to Palm Beach on Fri and worked on the boat all day and slept aboard in an older spinnaker and worked all day and and arrived back here at about 2030hrs or so and has been cooking ever since.

I spent the day with Ashley on the boat on Friday trying hard to be useful… just little tasks like taking inventory of their packaged food and the first aid kit and emailing them off to where they needed to go. I also managed to get the lifeline cushions on the port side, though I must confess it took me 2 tries to get them right.

So, that’s my story for the moment. When she finishes cooking, we’ll vacuume seal the food and clean up the kitchen and try to get a bit of sleep and tomorrow we get to go SAILING!

We’ll do a bit of a car shuffle, and head back up to Cracker Boy Boat Works to get Yeoman XXXII and SAIL down to Ft. Lauderdale so she’ll be here for the start of the Ft. Lauderdale to Key West race on Wednesday.

The above was written by my gracious host Steffi who is now trying to revert the raping of her kitchen back to virgin status. The coq au vin will NEVER be made again. Started at 8pm and it is now 12:20am…. bed time.