Tag Archives: Santa Barbara Yacht Club

Time for friends

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Sailing in Santa Barbara on our friends’ boat.

We’re having house guests for the weekend. I’ve been running around, cleaning, planning menus and buying food. Our good friends from Santa Barbara that we met as newlyweds are driving out to see us in Arizona.

Our husbands met each other during training in Princeton at the beginning of their careers with Merrill Lynch. They hit it off and since we all lived in California, they invited us to their apartment in Santa Barbara. We made the four-hour trek from Palm Springs one weekend.

I’ll never forget pulling up to the curb at the place of people I’d never met and my husband’s friend said “Right mates, let go!” (He’s from Australia.) We jumped in his car and headed to the marina where his wife was waiting for us on their boat.

Soon, I learned how to skirt the jib and follow other commands. We were in the midst of a race with the Santa Barbara Yacht Club. They asked if I needed a jumper which I had no idea meant a sweater. Other Aussie phrases I learned that weekend were “G’day mate” and “for sh*ts and giggles.”

That was the beginning of a friendship I treasure. I overheard the friend tell my husband, “The wives are getting along. It doesn’t always work out that way.”

We don’t have anything nearly as exciting planned for their visit as being in a yacht race. But we’ll enjoy each other’s company, hike some trails and check out the water level at our nearby lake.

What are your favorite things to do with friends?

How did you meet your best friends?

Do you have couple friends that both you and your spouse enjoy?

You can barely see my friend’s head over her husband’s back on one of our sailing trips.

Life is better with friends

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Santa Barbara Harbor

“All right mates! Let’s go.” Rob, an Aussie, called out to us when we parked in front of an apartment complex in Santa Barbara.

We jumped into his car without unloading ours. Off we went to the harbor where he said his wife Debbie was waiting for us on their sailboat.

That’s the first time I met the couple who would become our close friends. It was “BK” before kids — and around 35 years ago. My husband and Rob met on the East Coast training with a large brokerage firm. They had hit it off and decided we all needed to get together once they returned to California.

On the boat, Rob shouted orders like “Skirt the jib!” “Ready about!” or “Trim the main.”

My husband and I were expected to jump in and help, but we didn’t now what to do. Debbie showed us “the ropes” and how to respond to each command.

Years before, I had taken sailing at the University of Washington in college with my brother. We were in a small sailboat and I remember getting hit in the head by the boom. My earrings popped out and a clump of hair ripped out of my head onto the boom as we “came about.” I had a small amount of experience — which was more than my husband had.

We soon learned that this was not a leisurely sail. We found ourself in a Santa Barbara Yacht Club race!

That weekend was the beginning of years of friendship. In the early years, we visited them and stayed in their apartment because they were too busy to visit us. Rob left the brokerage business and they opened a savory Aussie pie shop that sold hand-held pies about the size of hamburgers.

My favorite pies were scallop and cheese, spinach and feta — and best of all — Shepherd’s pie. The pie shop was the first of several entrepreneurial businesses.

I remember one afternoon driving to a beach for a picnic. We got stuck in traffic that wasn’t moving. They pulled off the road and set up a picnic on a red and white checkered tablecloth with smoked oysters, tomatoes, cheese, crackers, and a bottle of “cab sav” in a field dotted with cows in the far off distance.

Time spent with Rob and Debbie is always an adventure. I can’t wait to see them in August on our vacation.

My husband and me on our friends’ sailboat decades after meeting them.

Rob at the tiller with Debbie.

Fred and Honey, our friends’ Galahs. Rob had to give up his Australian citizenship to bring them to the U.S.

How did you meet your close friends from decades ago? Do you stay in touch today?