The Littlest

Yet again, I was the littlest. I've been the Littlest Christmas Tree, the littlest employee, and now the littlest member of the yachting team. Ok, I wasn't really on a yachting team, but I got to pretend for a minute. Yesterday for "work" I went on a racing yacht that has traveled around the world. The boat is a 72 foot boat identical to its peers in the race. The teams are comprised of one professional skipper and 17 amateur sailors--from novice to lived-life-on-a-boat. The average age is approximately 35 partially because it costs $60,000 to go, despite heavy corporate sponsorship. The race lasts 9 months and travels from Portsmouth, UK to Buenos Aires, New Zealand, Australia, Cape Town, Boston, La Rochelle in France, and back to Portsmouth. I got to go out on the boat and while it was my turn to steer I got to drive us under the Tobin Bridge, which I thought we were definitely going to hit with our 100' mast. We didn't. Then we turned around and went South. On the trip, I discovered my camera battery had all but died, I had wine spilled on my pants--my new pants, I might add, and I burned my nose to a crisp because I refused to wear the goofy hat. Should have done that because now I look like Rudolph. Oh yeah, how was I the littlest? Well, all of my other corporate sailors (we were all invited by Factiva, the news service we use at the office, to take part in the event) were older than my parents. It was pretty funny. I bet most of them thought that I must be older than I look. Everyone seems to think I'm really young these days. Except one person who thought I was approximately 28--but that's another story.