When the wind picks up here in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, a great changing-of-the-guard takes place. Out with the sea kayakers. In with the sailors.

When the wind gets gusty and gutsy, those who love to sit below sea level and solo pilot their long, lean crafts grouse and grumble and haul out onto dry land. With the calm, glassy surface of Puget Sound broken by wind-whipped white caps, the waters are no longer for them.

But the sailors rejoice. With the first white curls on the water's surface come a flotilla of bright, keeling over sailboats, swiftly skipping over the surface of the whisking water. The freshening winds that tether the kayakers are tonic for the sailors' souls. The very winds that spook the kayakers let sailors fly across the water instead of plowing through …