Yachtie Karate in the Home...(possibly arts and crafts time!)

That's right...you heard me! To fill you all in, I've grown up sailing. I started out when I was 8 years old sailing Opti's at Columbia Yacht Club. I loved it, got my own Laser when I was 12, and never looked back. My parents, however, were not the ones that had been sailing all their lives, in fact, my mother once got violently sea sick and my father, well he never even liked going to the beach! Anyways, when I was in about 8th grade I would come home from sailing and start jabbering on about tacks, windward marks and so on. They had no clue what I was say and figured, "Hey, our kid really digs this whole sailing thing...we better jump on board". BEST MOVE EVER!

My parents took about two weeks of sailing classes and were hooked (those grey wristband things work for sea sickness! Ask my mom!). They purchased a Beneteau 36s7 (not to be confused with the 36.7), sailed it for a few years and realized, as fun as it was cruising around, they would much rather be racing. They sold the 36 and purchased a Beneteau 40.7, which at the time was a budding one-design class in Chicago. They eventually tricked me into sailing with them, and well, the rest is better told over a beer.

Point is, my family is totally into sailing, and we are total visual people. We sit and discussing racing at the dinner table fairly consistently, and given that my parents are both architects, we all like to diagram things out. One year for a Chicago-Mac crew meeting we put out an easel with a large pad of paper. Well the Mac came and went but the easel stayed. Through multiple seasons it sat just off the corner of our dinning room table (this killed my mom, but she played along).

On Christmas, in an effort to be a little “greener" I purchased a white board for my parents! Complete with a little set of boats. Now I'm not going to knock who ever makes and sells the little boat kits, but people...DO IT YOURSELF! It is really simple to cut out different color boats stick on some magnet tape and personalize your at home fleet! I've included some sweet photos so you can all get a feel for what we have in the Muller household.

Don't be afraid to unleash your inner nerd (hey, we sail, we're geeks) and take your karate to the next level. I mean my mom put the white board away at some point when I was gone at school, and sure enough, we were sitting at dinner, debating over something or another that happened on the course, trying to use butter knives and pepper grinders, and my Dad looked up and said, "well now, where the hell is the white board?!?!" It's useful, and who knows, it could lead to hours of stimulating family conversation (or you may have to break out the rule book 2 bottles of wine later) No matter what, good times will be had by all!