That's Pick with her back to the camera as we headed out the Brazos Santiago Pass back in 2003 aboard our Rhodes 22, Le Menagerie

Today is one of those landmark days in a families life. Our oldest at home daughter, Sasha is graduating from Port Isabel High School, going on to college this fall. Like births, deaths and marriages this occassion is marked with a certain amount of awe and retrospection.

It was just yesterday and she was home from pre-kindergarten, sick with a cold, standing, looking over my shoulder as I stirred a pan of bubbling roux for the quarterly gumbo I like to make.

And just like that roux, our own lives are filled with complexity and an ephemeral nature that allows us to remember the flavor of things long after they are gone.

I quickly nicknamed Sasha, Pick - as in Pick of the litter. A mostly serious and dedicated child, I have often told her (with a genuine modicum of seriousness myself), that if there's anything left, it will go to her to decide how to divide. Pick is a child far mature beyond her 18 years.

We owned an old bombproof Abbott 30 a decade ago when the twins were born, but had to sell it when things just got too complex. Down the road we suffered a fire that destroyed every material position we owned, and it took a while to recover from that, but in 2003 we bought a Rhodes 22, Le Menagerie.

Pick has only sailed with us twice. The first time was a beautiful, blue June day, light winds, blue seas and skies with only a gentle 2-3 foot ground swell rolling through. We slipped outside the Brazos Santiago Pass and I set out a trolling line hoping to catch a Kingfish as we slid quietly along south towards the mouth of the Rio Grande River, Boca Chica.

It was then that we began to notice that Pick was turning a light shade of green in contrast to the turquoise water. We got out the spray can from the lazarette and began to soak her down hoping that the cool water would help, but she just kept getting greener and greener. I decided to turn around, go back to Anchor Marina, we weren't that far away anyhow.

Inside the Brazos Santiago Pass, the wind dropped out of the big Genny and we sat there bobbing in the mixmaster as I lowered the Honda 9.9 into the water and cranked the starter. At that exact moment Pick groaned; "Oh no!" leaned over the port rail and proceeded to make fish chum, much to the amusement of onlookers from the jetties and other fishing boats drifting and anchored nearby.

She recovered somewhat as we continued to motor in on the calm Laguna Madre, and we kept dousing her with the spray can. She was off of Le Menagerie before I even got the dock lines tied off.....

Even though Sasha says that just seeing a mast bobbing back and forth gets her seasick, she came out one final time with us on a beautiful cool October afternoon when the water was like glass. That's the way she is...every pleasant, ever anxious to please. She has given me a world of good memories that I will sail of into the sunset with, long after she has established her own life and home.

So it makes no nevermind to me whether she physically sails with us or not. She sails in my heart. 

I couldn't be prouder of Pick regardless.

Tonight I will raise a toast to my lovely daughter and sail with her into her next adventure.