However I have the ability to also add posts. I wanted to share this little image that I finished recently. It’s the background of one of the pages, and I realized that in the final product a lot of the image is going to be hidden by other graphics and text, which kind of hurt. I just like the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s the most photographed bridge in the world for good reason.

So here is a little drawing that I like and I hope you like, and a preview of some of what will be showing up in book 2.

Just a background?

This is a different boat than the one that Tam and Kay started out with. Some features are gone, but they have added a few.

Keen observers will notice that I am putting a bit more detail into the interior than I used to. Kay picked an Island Packet 35 for a lot of reasons. It’s a much better cruising sailor than the Columbia 40 he had with a better underway layout and better sea berths. Another major feature is that it is very well photographed and I am able to find reference photos for every single aspect of this particular boat from a large number of angles. Totally a critical feature for the sailor who is going to be rendered in a comic. The lack of interior reference for the Columbia 40 left me trying to make up a fair amount of stuff which took tremendous effort with dubious results. I much prefer accuracy. The second half of this page takes place in the fore cabin, which has sacrificed its beds for Tam’s production facilities. Those will be described more later.

I remember the first time I sailed into San Francisco bay.

A little.

Mind you it was a big event. In some ways one of the biggest in my life. To understand why I have to tell you why I was sailing into the bay and how I got there. I was actually sailing my boat up to Seattle and never intended to even stop in San Francisco. I was going to skip along from Monterrey to Mendocino and avoid the high traffic and poor visibility that the entrance to the bay is famous for. However while about 120 miles off shore due west of the foggy city my boat started sinking and I high tailed it into the bay I was planning on avoiding.

Four days later I sailed into the bay and it was the first sunlight I had seen for 3 days. Since I was using celestial navigation  and I had been in fog for three days in a sinking boat I was only kept from panic from sheer exhaustion. So while it was one of the biggest events of my life to sail to safety my reaction was something like “Yay. I’m saved. Now maybe I can sleep!”. While most of you haven’t had such an experience I am sure, just imagine getting to your dream vacation destination – after spending 3 days in a plane in 3rd class.

That’s about the attitude I was thinking Kay might have in this panel. Tam of course would be just as chipper as she always is. I doubt he would have found that very comforting.