One of the great things about my previous job, was the opportunity to travel. We had offices all over the world and I would frequently get invited to present at local User Groups. One such trip was to the office in Hong Kong in 2000. James was 16 at the time. He and Laura were able to join me.
Bill was an American friend who had transferred to the Hong Kong office. While we were there over the weekend he invited us to come sailing with him. He owned a 62 foot sailboat with two masts (called a ketch), which he kept in Hong Kong Harbor.
When we started out the weather was fine, just a bit overcast. Bill should have checked the forecast. Turns out there was what is called a Red Flag Warning that a storm was coming. As we were sailing along it looked like we were going to sail into a wall. The wall was a solid sheet of rain. We really had no business being out there. Bill was not a much better sailor than I was at the time and everyone else on the boat had no experience at all. By the time we turned around and headed back we were being heavily rained on and many of the passengers were hypothermic and sea-sick… not fun at all.
We managed to get back OK, obviously but it was scary there for a while.
