I’m flying through Chicago on my way back to Seattle from my past two weeks of conferences in Europe (first the SQL Server Summer Academy in Croatia and second Microsoft Tech*Ed Europe) both of which were great…and after all the craziness I’m in Chicago this week – to see family\/friends and check on things for the SQLskills SQL Immersion Event<\/A> – which will be held in downtown Chicago in October. Having grown up in Chicago (and been away for 12+ years) I quickly remember what summers are like. Yesterday it was 86 with 100% humidity (at least it felt like it) <\/EM>and today it was 70 and breezy… But – October, that’s another story! October is typically an IDEAL time. <\/P> But – having complained about the weather a bit – I can’t really complain about the day! My Father is the Chicago area representative for Hunter<\/a>\/Dufour<\/a> and works through Racine Riverside<\/A> exclusively selling these wonderful yachts in the Chicagoland area. This is a job change for Dad after many years…where sailing was his main hobby\/passion but certainly not his career. Anyway, that’s what led me to this post – I have sailed on many “boats” growing up but it’s been many years… and I don’t remember boats like these; these boats are NOT racers – these are cruisers – and they have every ammenity possible (and then some – for example, I never did get time to watch the flat panel TV w\/DVD, etc…)<\/P> So – the “demo” boat we took out today was a Hunter 44 Aft Cockpit (2004)<\/A> and it was MORE than comfortable. Easy to sail and filled with all sorts of gadgets so that even I looked like I knew what I was doing…. The features are just amazing. You just can’t NOT love an electric winch, and roller furling for BOTH the jib and the main – gotta love not having to reef the main…. Wow, what a great boat!!!! Here are a few pics of the day…<\/P> My Dad at the Helm.jpg (21.52 KB)<\/a>
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Nice shot of the clean lines.jpg (20.69 KB)<\/a>
The city is just ahead.jpg (20.36 KB)<\/a>
Kimberly at the helm.jpg (24.29 KB)<\/a><\/P>
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![Nice shot of the clean lines.jpg (20.69 KB)<\/a>](\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/kimberly\/content\/binary\/img_19281.jpg\"){kind=link}
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![Kimberly at the helm.jpg (24.29 KB)<\/a><\/P>\nSo – if you’re in the general area, would love to own a beautiful cruising yacht… talk to my Dad<\/A>! He won’t believe you read it here!! (well, neither will I<\/EM> :)<\/P>\nWhat a nice way to end the 4th of July weekend! Back to work!! Index recommendations are coming tomorrow!<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m flying through Chicago on my way back to Seattle from my past two weeks of conferences in Europe (first the SQL Server Summer Academy in Croatia and second Microsoft Tech*Ed Europe) both of which were great…and after all the craziness I’m in Chicago this week – to see family\/friends and check on things for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/kimberly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/kimberly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/kimberly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/kimberly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/kimberly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/kimberly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/kimberly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/kimberly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/kimberly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/kimberly\/content\/binary\/img_19351.jpg\"){kind=link}