My life with boats and a few other things

Oct. 2, 2006 - Ok, this is it...I am breaking down and writing about boats. I have sailed since Elementary school when I built my first boat. I spent forever building it, I think probably 3 or 4 weeks and it promptly sank first time out but it was enough to get me started and I have loved boats ever since.

Yes, I love cars, old British ones and fast beautiful Red Italian ones and even gorgeous Yellow Motorcycles and I wont mention Pizza here, I have arguments with my wife about how I should pick a hobby. Well I have, I just won't tell her which one

So lets ramble on about boats, for those of you new to my life on the web, you will notice I ramble a lot, I take paragraphs to say what could (and sometimes should be) said in one sentence, that is me...you should get used to it if you are going to read these. I also tend to ramble on in a non-organized manner, I am as time goes on trying to fix that.

My first boat as I already mentioned sank first time out but I had a great day by tying a inner tube under it to keep it afloat for the afternoon, I remember it was more or less a square box built entirely from shipping pallets, I would guess it was about 7ft. by 5ft. very flat bottom and oh yeah, no keel or centerboard/daggerboard, what can I say ? I was about 12 years old and did not know any better. My mother sewed a sail and away I went for my great adventure, it sank within minutes. Well it never really sank since it was just wood, but it floated about ankle depth when I stood in it. I put a inner tube under it and sailed the afternoon away, too scared to get more than about 20ft. from shore I seem to remember.

My next boat was a Sea Snark, a styrofoam 11ft. Lateen rig boat, I learned how to sail on that one, had it for some time and one day in fairly rough seas with too much wind it broke in half. It had a multi-color sail that my mother sewed up after getting nylon cloth from a local fabric store, the sail looked quite good, not much of a shape but it worked for quite some time, I have no idea how long but at least 2 summers. The day it broke in half, I was about 3 miles from shore when the winds started gusting up quite high and as I could not reef the sail I turned around. I do remember the Harbor Patrol guy yelling at me for being out in that thing in 20+ knots of wind, gusts were 25+ he claimed and Small Craft Advisories were up, he was saying all these things as he rescued me and all I could say was something like "I was fine until my boat broke into 2 pieces" I was probably about 13 to 14 at the time, and by the time she broke up, I was only a 1/4 mile from shore, I was swimming to shore dragging both pieces of my boat with and did not need rescuing (I thought). I wanted to try and fix her but the Sea Snark's were just styrofoam and you can't fix them once they are in 2 pieces. They later came out with plastic coated styrofoam boats but the first were just foam.

After that I got a 16ft something (supposed to be a DingBat 16 but I have never seen any reference to another one) that was actually a rowing tender for a local fishing boat, I worked on the fishing boat for a summer in exchange for this boat. I cut a daggerboard slot in it, rigged a sail initially from a Sea Shell (like a Sabot) and then moved up to a Snipe mast and sail rigged as a cat boat. I had it for a while and made mistakes of course in the "design" like putting the daggerboard way too far forward and making it way too big. As I learned I changed it around and enjoyed that boat. Then around 16 years old, I went to my first real boat and my first love, a Sea Mew I remember having her prior to my 16th birthday but I don't remember how much before, I only know that I played hooky from school and went and got my drivers license by driving my mothers car to the DMV and taking the test (oops that was illegal, driving myself to take the test and lying to the tester that my mother was in the bathroom when he asked how I got there, but its water under the keel now) and after passing the test taking my Sea Mew for a sail, she was named for the strong winds that fan the coasts of France called the Mistral's, although I never painted her name on her transom.. Mine was a glass one built by Harry Davis of Santa Barbara but I loved that boat and would buy her today if I could find her.

Then it was a Sea Quest 26, Coronado 15, Catalina 27 and finally a Downeaster 32, the most awesome boat afloat on the planet, 17 1/2 years of wonderful ownership on that boat but one day I got bad news about my job and decided I could not risk the slip fees anymore so I sold her. They say the 2 happiest days of a boat owners life are the day he buys the boat and the day he sells the boat, no I was in tears when I sold her. 18 months after selling her, I decided on another boat and to my wife's credit she did not say no, I was very surprised when I first suggested it that she did not say "are you crazy?". I looked for a Sea Mew but the one I found was already sold, I looked for the other dream boats the Sakonet 23 but its out of my price range along with the Haven 12 1/2 and of course the Corsair F-24 or F-27. So I went back to look for a Coronado 15, I really enjoyed that boat when I owned one and on a motorcycle ride I stopped at the dealer in Ventura where I purchased my DE 32 to look at a small boat such as the Catalina 14 or 16 and he suggested a Catalina Capri 22 which was nice, very nice and met my wife's rule of "no slip fees" but I also came home with the brochure for the Catalina 18 which I really liked. I thought it would easier to trailer than the 22 and of course cheaper to buy.

more to follow soon, mostly on the individual pages rather than this one as I don't want to bore my readers.... And even a menu system for these pages