Birthday Celebrations Onboard Hekla

Meg and I have been sailing with Fred and Sally on Hekla for many years. Frequently, the sail would span Fred’s birthday. We tried to come up with a gift that would elicit that famous smile.
In this first picture, Fred was presented with his birthday pancakes in 1997.


Our young son Frank had a stuffed tiger. The parallels with Calvin and Hobbs were unmistakable. We loved the comic strips and found many similarities with life around our house. In 1991, we brought Fred a Calvin and Hobbs book. Fred spent the next hour in tears. I am sure it was sympathy for our situation and not remembrances of George’s (or Fred's) childhood behavior!


In 1997, the gift was a puzzle. This puzzle is created from wooden cubes. Each face of each cube has a different piece of a different picture. So, each piece has 6 sides and 28 possible positions yielding 6 different correct solutions. Fred has just finished calculating the number of possibilities!

Click on any of the pictures above to jump to my SmugMug account. You can see larger versions of the pictures and download any you would like to save. If you have any great pictures of Fred, send them to me and I will post them for his many fans. (To avoid spam, I am not using my normal email address and I am displaying it in a graphic.)