Ari's Bad Day

Art Paine is both a writer and an artist. Although he’s a heck of a lot better artist than writer he still gets a kick out of a good play-on-words. Like Ari’s Bad Day. It seems like Ari does have an incredible string of poor luck. It was probably an incidence of that, rather than bad will, behind the name of his home-built dinghy, “Empty Promises.” But the boat is ill-starred. The first year he sailed her, Ari battled his way right to the head of the dinghy fleet, only to capsize right at the weather mark. And watched the whole fleet go sailing right by. It was a terrible day for Ari. But of course we should put this all in perspective. A thousand miles North, in Maine where Art Paine comes from, it snowed a foot on that very day and the power went out and cars were spinning out and going off the road. It was interminably gray. So. Ari had a bad day. With the temperature at eighty degrees, the wind a perfect twenty knots, beautiful clouds passing by in waves, casting their dense cobalt shadows across sunlit Elizabeth Harbor. There he stood on the keel, viewing a scene of ineffable beauty. On his terrible, horrible day in Exuma, in the trade winds a mile North of the Tropic of Capricorn.