Must be nice to hide behind your anonymity while viciously tongue-wagging about people of your community (“Sail away, sail away,” Jan. 19).

The very reason a sailor takes to the water is to get away from such infantile “gossip.” Oh, yeah, you’re not a sailor—just a poser, partial to sea shanties. I kind of always suspected you were always full of sheets.

Now, by matey, begone. I know you are. I will stick to my New Times music bible pages from now on, thank you. Pat Hedges served as vice commodore, a less-than-glamorous job, before being appointed as an even less glamorous commodore. While his record as sheriff of SLO County was less than stellar, it is easy to forgive and move on when you see how quietly and methodically he takes on mundane tasks to support his sailing family. His cautious involvement suggests a man who may have been out of his league as the captain of a testosterone-driven ship. (I know; I served on a jury involving one of his John Wayne-renegade task “enforcers.” I brought that officer to the attention of your editor, who chose not to run the story.)

Pat Hedges is a weary man who should be left to do good things, if only for redemption purposes. I met him, recently, at the SLO blood bank and looked up after he left to see he had been a donor well over 100 times. (How many times have you donated blood, Shredder? Oh yeah, we don’t know anything about you, so I can assume never!) Stick that in your self-involved, judgmental, sea-shanty pipe and smoke it.

P.S.—I am not a “rich white”(another of your fallacies) yacht club member, merely an outside observer. So, as I have done, don’t forget to sign in as a guest the next time you invite yourself to a MBYC event to snoop.