We remember our junior sailing days with warm, fuzzy nostalgia. It was the smell of sun-baked wood, sunscreen and BBQs, and long summer days filled with sailing, swimming and friends.

Joshua Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World begins with the author rebuilding the Spray, an old pile of timber, into the first boat to be singlehanded around the world. Slocum had a general 'do it yourself' mentality.

Custom-built in New Zealand by the original owner, Aura is a round-bilge, 46-ft steel ketch. In the seven years we sailed around Central and South America, we found her responsive, safe, fast and comfortable to live aboard.

When vision is impaired, other senses become more acute. On January 25, a low, dense fog obscured San Francisco Bay, and the single- and doublehanders in the Three Bridge Fiasco found themselves tuning in to the sounds around them.

We would say that spring is on the verge of, well, springing, here in the Bay Area, but February felt more like summer. The only time it wasn't windy, as fate would have it, was during a few races.

I was studying a watercolor of a kayak paddling up a marina fairway. Looking closer at the kayak in the painting, I wondered if it could be the one that Lee Helm often borrows from the local outrigger club.