If there were any romanticism in sailing for my middle son then mother nature has most assurdadly kicked the crap out of any such notions. 

This week my son set off as a member of Greyhawk, a 1980's vintage 34-foot Person sailing boat.  The new owner of the boat, a New Hampshire university professor, bought her for $12,000 and is sailing her from Maryland to Maine.  My son is part of a six member crew helping with the passage.

You can see Greyhawk in the picture to the left; it's the small one on the left hand side of the pier.

But the weather has conspired against the good ship Greyhawk and her crew from the very start.  A storm front set against the Northeast and hunkered down all week like a huskie on a cold night; the storm just refused to leave the coast. 

Greyhawk, which already was looking small for six men for a week at sea, must have seemed like little more than a postage stamp at times during her passage. 

They are due in July 1st and I anxiously await the details.  In the meantime, here's a little slideshow of the Greyhawk and her preparations.

No news is better than bad news and good news is, well, better than no news.  See how creative I'm getting while on sabbatical?  What?  You didn't know I was actually on sabbatical?  Um... well, that's what I'm telling people these days. 

Having mentioned to several that I'm "unemployed," you would have thought I said something more along the lines of: "Oh, by the way, you might want to wash your hand after shaking with me, you see, I have leprosy," by the look of horror on their faces.  As if they could "catch" unemployment just being in my orbit.

And so there is a trifecta of good news running through the Meeks clan these days.

First up, my oldest son's photography is getting recognized beyond a small circle of friends and family.  He has an absolutely dynamite looking exhibit set up in a Nicaraguan cafe in San Juan del Sur.  The El Gato Negro is run by a couple of expatriates down there trying to make a go of it.  The other, bigger news, for my son is that his photos have been noticed by the biggest magazine in Central America and because of that, they are doing a full on profile of him and running several of his pictures full size in their magazine.  Well done, son.

And, oh yeah!  Sometime early next year, he (and his lovely wife) will make me a grandpa twice over! 

Stepping Up Her Game
The newest member of the Meeks clan, my daughter-in-law Ashley, is moving up to the world of daily newspaper journalism, this after having paid her dues working on a small weekly newspaper up in Maine.  And she's done it at lightening speed, having gone from interview to job to out of the job in about 14 months.

Jumping into the world of daily newspapering is more psychological than anything else, at least at this level.  If she were jumping to the New York Times, or even the Toledo Blade, it would be a hell of a leap; instead she's making a smaller but significant transition to the Roswell Daily Record, a paper whose most significant story to date was probably the 1947 page one article seen here.

I'm as proud of her as if she were my own kid; well done, Ashley, you're destined for much bigger papers, if you so choose. 

Another Notch in the Belt
Completing this trifecta?  Well, that would be me.  I've won a National Press Club award for having produced the Best Online Journalism for 2005.  Ok, it wasn't just me, the award  was given to a small group of reporters (four of us) and photographers (three) that produced the "Rising from the Ruin" series for my previous employer, MSNBC.com.

Here's what the judges said in presenting us the award:

"MSNBC's excellent blend of outstanding journalism and comprehensive use of technology continues to lead this category. Their superior blend of text, graphics, interactivity, streaming audio and video in personally configurable formats, combined with solid journalism covering an important problem - the recovery after Hurricane Katrina - and the various perspectives of journalists, readers, and those who experienced (and continue to struggle through) the post-hurricane Katrina recovery, created the winning entry.  Overall, an excellent work from a powerful site that leverages web technology effectively to explore what is arguably the nation's biggest problem of 2005."

This is actually my second award from the National Press Club.  I won my first NPC award ages ago working for Communications Daily and I won for a series of investigative stories I did back then.

And here's the kicker: my old boss didn't even have the decency to send me an e-mail and let me know about the award; I heard it second hand from another reporter sending me a "congratulations" message.  And that's about all I have to say about that...