'keen knowing eye..' never let them know the ....... {;>) GO we should organize ----all the Phoenix area Montgomerys for a day or weekend sail at LP before the you know what gets here...interested? In a message dated 3/8/2016 10:45:05 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time, drifkind@acm.org writes: Having run out of excuses, my wife and I took my/our slightly restored M17 up to Lake Pleasant, north of Phoenix, to see if it would float. My wife is not a sailor (and you might say that makes us even). She has more time in this boat than I do, though, as twenty years ago she spent two months living aboard it one summer, in a slip at Shelter Island, San Diego, with her dog, Blue. The boat has been out of the water for ten years (I think I keep saying that a lot) and I’ve been out for longer. Setting up took longer than I planned, even though I planned on taking longer than I expected. Need to work on organization. Also need to learn how to operate a trailer. I don’t think you’re supposed to get quite as wet as I did. Maybe that’s because the outboard, which has been running perfectly all week in a test tank (aka trash can) declined to work. Anyway, walking the boat off the trailer got me up to my waist. The boat itself held water (I mean held it out) and the little breeze was in a good direction, so we sailed off the dock. Let me tell you a complete lie about how competently and easily we sailed out of the marina. No, let’s just pass over lightly. The wind was weak and shifty and we might have done better paddling with our hands, but out on the lake it picked up a bit. Occasionally I stopped cursing. Sometimes it was pretty nice. Heading back to the ramp I wasted more time prodding the motor, sailed right past the dock downwind, and had to work back up to it. We made it with the grace of an ostrich on ice skates; I soaked myself to the waist again getting back on the trailer. A fellow brought another sailboat in to the dock a few minutes after us. He said, “Was that you that sailed out of here a while ago?” I mumbled excuses. “No,” he said, “it looked really good. I want to try that some time.” I grew several inches taller and gazed into the distance with the keen knowing eye of the weathered sailor.