Have I been too quiet lately? I’m sure you miss my sparkling wit.  Well, wait no more!  Leslie put me in charge of writing a whole section of our backstory.  

“You in the mood to write, Sonrisa? I have writers block."  She always wants me to take the helm when she gets writer's block.

“Sure, what about?"

“I think you should write the backstory bit on the refit process.”  She says. 

The refit?  What does she mean by that?  “What’s a refit?”  I ask.

“You know, all the work we did to get you ready to go sailing?”  

Ahhh…the “refit.”  I smile to myself.  Leslie thinks they did the work to get me ready to go sailing.  Little did they know, all the while they were turning bolts, sweating, and cussing, it was I preparing them to go off shore. 

You’ve probably read the posts about the day we first met, (Andrew, Leslie and I) as written by Leslie.  In all those posts, she keeps saying “we didn't really find Sonrisa, she found us.”  Did you brush her assertion aside, waving it off with your hand as sailor superstition gobbledygook.  Did you say: “That’s silly, how would a boat go about finding it’s people?” It’s not easy, I tell you.  I hunted long and hard, with a few false starts on this round. 

People are hard to choose!  Sometimes, they look great on the outside, all smiles with wind in their hair, but when you start digging around, you realize their deck substrate is stuffed with newspaper and bananas.  Not a good human to take to sea! 

And usually, unless you can find a turn key sailor (which is rare), finding a good human is only the first step.  Thereafter, you have to “refit” them, and get them ready to take to sea.  This is my story.  Over the Sonrisa’s Refit Series of posts I will let you in on my Secret Formula to Find and Refit Sailors to Take To Sea.