For those of you who have sailed on Nymeria, we have a tradition of having a glass, or two, of Champagne when we safely make it back to the dock after a sail. It is an Erickson Rule to always have a bottle of Champagne in the fridge and it’s a self-imposed regulation that we are willing to uphold.
In order to keep up with traditions, our Champagne delivery device system was in need of some attention. Not only was the wine glass rack starting to come down on one side but the glasses wouldn’t stay on the rack when the boat was at a significant heel/angle. We have plastic wine/champagne glasses so there was no worry of things breaking if they came loose but we really don’t want items to be flying or rolling around when we’re underway. Temporarily, I stuffed some napkins into the end of the rack to keep glasses secure but it looked pretty tacky. There had to be another solution.
The idea of using a cork popped into my head while drinking a nice Pinot Grigio from a can. I’ve been buying cans of white wine since they fit better in our fridge and don’t require me to have to finish a whole bottle by myself since Justin prefers Whisky/Scotch. For this project, I would need 4 wine corks and you would think that it would be easy but a lot of wines have screw tops or corks that aren’t made out of actual cork. But darn it, I was up for the challenge. Six bottles of wine later, I was able to repurpose my corks into wine glass stoppers. I was able to use the dremel which was a lot of fun and found some corks with interesting markings on them. Now, we just need to go sail and test it out.
In preparation for this blog post, I came across some sailor/nautical toasts to friends and safe passages. Over the years, we’ve used the Scandinavian “Skål” as a simple way to say “cheers” but love to hear a good toast. Leave us a comment with your favorite way to say “cheers”.
Here’s to tall ships, Here’s to small ships, Here’s to all the ships at sea.
But the best ships are friendships, Here’s to you and me.
