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Repair kits available! You never quite know what tack a World Famous Latitude 38 Caption Contest(!) will take. This month's was, without a doubt, all about foiling, foiling . . . foiling. "A land foiler?" or "Are we foiling the right way?" many of you quipped. There were also emphatic warnings: "Whatever you do, don't walk to the bow." We also had more than a few entries that said, "Put a coat of bottom paint on before the tide comes back in." And, oh yeah, let's not forget, "This is last year's tide book." We feel like we've been saying this a lot, but this was, perhaps, the most popular Caption Contest(!) in Latitude history. Thank you, Nation. Aaaaaannnnnnnnd the winner is:

"OK, time to remove the training foils." — Pat Broderick "All we need now are roller skates." — Michael Childs "Think they'll notice we didn't pick the holding tank option?" — Brad Kerstetter "Can I ask for directions now?" — Adrianna B Cincoski "New evidence! Early ancestor of the automobile photographed crawling from the water on its little keels." — B Daker "This is not what I meant when I said let's spend a day at the beach." — Robertta Edwards "Travelift? We don't need no stinkin' Travelift!" — Jeff Phillips "When you called and said you were at the sand bar, I thought you had just gone for a beer." — John Lewis "Found where to set that keel offset on the depthsounder. What's it reading now?" — Michael Scipione "Don't be the guys too early at the start for ice sailing." — Roderick Bauer

"Books and books and books — some 500 volumes in all. Books of the sea and books of the land, some of them streaked with salt, collected with love and care over more than 25 years. "Melville, Conrad, London, Stevenson; Gauguin and Loti and Rupert Brooke; Lubbock, Masefield, de Hartog — Slocum and Rockwell Kent; Trelawny amd Cook and Bligh; Chapelle and Underhill — Nansen, Frobisher, Villiers and Scott and Louis Becke. Homer, Gerbault, and Tompkins. Hundreds more: all cast in a common mold — blessed with the genius that makes men feel, and dream, and go." Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

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Boat Yoga. This is the cutter pose. — Ron Harben

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"So, you're a sailor?" he asked me, a little perplexed. I hadn't heard this inquiry, nor seen this look, in a long time. I was waiting for my drink at the crowded bar when, randomly, he asked about my bright-blue and neon-green foul-weather jacket with the high fleece-lined collar and the reflective strips on the shoulder. My jacket was caked in salt. I just sailed here on my boat, I told him. By myself, I added without thinking. It was my longest-ever singlehanded sail, from Vallejo to Aquatic Park, and it had been intense. My hair was frizzy and windblown around my shoulders. I could feel my cheeks glowing red. I saw myself in the mirror, a typical sailor girl. I felt the sting of sunburn on my nose, the saltiness on my lips. I was beaming, triumphant. He responded with his "So, you're a sailor," and his face twisted into that strangely bemused expression. Some of my non-sailing friends used to look at me the same way when I told them about my newfound passion. I could see them trying to conceptualize in real time what "a sailor" might be. They always seemed to struggle to reconcile whatever image was in their heads — someone who sipped martinis at yacht clubs; someone who worked on commercial ships — and who I was. It was so strange how something so important and familiar to me could be so foreign to so many of my friends who lived so close to the water their entire lives. I don't surf or rock climb or ski or scuba dive or whitewater raft, but it's not that hard for me to understand that people do those things, and that those things are part of their lives. A few acquaintances even asked me, a little indignantly, why I sailed. I could see this man at the bar doing it, too, trying to think of the next question to ask. He was cute and not unfriendly, but I braced for him to try and figure out what to say to me, this strange being. This sailor. To my surprise, and despite my mood, I was prepared to be annoyed. "You sailed here? By yourself? What was that like?" His expression changed from confusion to genuine curiosity. He was sweet, actually. He asked the right question. He didn't ask about yacht clubs. Yes, I thought to myself, I just sailed here. From Vallejo. By myself. In my Cal 20. Riding the ebb and arriving under the City just after the sun set. What was it like? San Pablo Bay was surprisingly more upwind and more work and way more rough than I thought it would be. By the time I got to the Richmond Bridge, I was exhausted, and I thought the wind would peter out as it got late. But the opposite happened. It built to a solid 25 to 30 and I had to lower the big jib and put up the number 2. But then the boat rode like a dream, and as I sat at the helm, smiling and awash with a second wind, I watched the bow split waves and send freezing-cold spray flying for a split second straight up, before it was flattened sideways by the wind over the foredeck. Backlit by the setting sun, the spray glowed orange and red, like embers fluttering in the wind. (If I ever had to explain why to someone, it would be that. To see those kinds of moments.) It was almost completely dark when I came in under Aquatic Park pier, my eyes glued to the water for swimmers. I had my motor down and ready, but I had plenty of water to head up, lower sail, untie the anchor and throw it. Once settled I cracked a beer, and soaked in the view I had been dreaming about — the flickering lights of the city on the water. Then I inflated the dinghy, threw it into the water, paddled to the beach, and came here, to the Buena Vista, for an Irish coffee to go, which the bartender finally handed me. "What was it like?" It was just sailing, I answered, and walked out the door. — anonymous