Sitting in the cockpit of our sons new boat last weekend, I marveled that we all four of us sat in his cockpit with room for four more! Tiller out of the way, his boat, Phillip Rhodes design from 1968, is a nearly exact 26' Daysailor today. I started thinking about restoring the boat(sand, paint, wet bar - voila:Daysailer).

Enjoying cool drinks, we pondered the idea of doing some work on young Tom's new old boat.

My son sipped his ice cold beer, and listened, nodded,... pondered,...

Then after a long pause, he said - resolutely but quietly, "I'm not doing a thing to this boat, except sailing it". Done.

Fair enough. He's not me. In fact later as his sister coiled up dock lines on his deck tied alongside ours, we overhead MJ say, "Hey Thomas, where do you want me to put these dock lines?"

In my sons smiling tone, just loud enough for all to hear, he shrugged and answered, "I don't care Mary Jane, I'm not Dad". We all had a good laugh.

Motoring into the harbor the next day, he had his sister take and send me this photo. He didn't want me to think he wasn't grateful for the new deck brush I gave him(he's a very grateful kid). He had just 'washed his decks' by sailing to windward.

But he did use the new brush handle as a tiller extension(to stay drier), taped to his tiller. Funny boy.