Hi all,
I know I only pop in her sporadically now. I don't have much time to read posts here. I'll explain.
I JUST found Don Parkers post from a few months ago flagging some of us old timers. I was going to respond there, but thought this is a topic that could have its own thread. Where life takes us.
I didn't know what sailing was until I met my first wife. She introduced me to it, and after a couple of seasons of trying to figure out how a sailboat goes upwind (if I knew the wind direction at all), it finally clicked.
We raced our Rhodes 19 but decided we wanted something we could sleep on, so we bought a Spirit 21. This was a cool little boat and we got bitten by the cruising bug. We had the Spirit one year and traded it for a Pearson 26.
We club raced and cruised this boat on our upstate New York lake for 20 years, and then we bought a 33' Hallberg-Rassy Mistral. This is an absolutely gorgeous boat with lots of mahogany to spend weeks every season varnishing and maintaining... but a beauty to look at.
Well, then a divorce, and a remarriage. And no boat. I gave my ex a house, two boats, and two cars all paid for in exchange for my business assets. She got the better of the deal.
We were boatless. It felt odd. But then my boss came to me and asked if I wanted to buy his mom's boat. She had recently passed. I asked what it was. He said it was a 46' trawler. No, I said, I'm a sailor! But long story short, we did buy it, spent a year making it run, I retired at age 60, and then we (Pamela and I, Smudge and Charlie the cats, and Ruby and Chevy the pit bulls) cruised from Stamford CT to Albany NY to Green Cove Springs FL (south of Jacksonville). This was the cruise of a lifetime for us. What a hoot! We spent about two years just meandering south, leaving when we didn't care for a place, and staying when we did.
Along the way I somehow became a photographer.
We finally decided we did our cruise and it was time for a new adventure. We sold Drift Away and bought ten acres of land deep in the forest of the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. We started prepping the land to build. We had a few acres cleared, a well drilled, built a couple of outbuildings, and started digging a foundation. I intended to build the house myself, another thing I wanted to do. Well, a neck breaking accident with a tree ended that. So the land is for sale, we live in Florida, and I am an author with five books published and I'm working on my sixth.
The last book is "The Voyage of Drift Away: Stamford to Annapolis" and the one I'm writing now will be "The Voyage of Drift Away: Annapolis to Jacksonville". The other four are about Sasquatch.
Oh... did I mention that Sasquatch are a real thing? Yes. Yes they are. And they are amazing to interact with.
Anyhow, it is good to see old names here, and I'm going to try to take writing breaks and pop in here more often and learn who all you new guys are.
Life is good. No matter what happens, make the most of it. Even if you wind up in a trawler.
I know I only pop in her sporadically now. I don't have much time to read posts here. I'll explain.
I JUST found Don Parkers post from a few months ago flagging some of us old timers. I was going to respond there, but thought this is a topic that could have its own thread. Where life takes us.
I didn't know what sailing was until I met my first wife. She introduced me to it, and after a couple of seasons of trying to figure out how a sailboat goes upwind (if I knew the wind direction at all), it finally clicked.
We raced our Rhodes 19 but decided we wanted something we could sleep on, so we bought a Spirit 21. This was a cool little boat and we got bitten by the cruising bug. We had the Spirit one year and traded it for a Pearson 26.
We club raced and cruised this boat on our upstate New York lake for 20 years, and then we bought a 33' Hallberg-Rassy Mistral. This is an absolutely gorgeous boat with lots of mahogany to spend weeks every season varnishing and maintaining... but a beauty to look at.
Well, then a divorce, and a remarriage. And no boat. I gave my ex a house, two boats, and two cars all paid for in exchange for my business assets. She got the better of the deal.
We were boatless. It felt odd. But then my boss came to me and asked if I wanted to buy his mom's boat. She had recently passed. I asked what it was. He said it was a 46' trawler. No, I said, I'm a sailor! But long story short, we did buy it, spent a year making it run, I retired at age 60, and then we (Pamela and I, Smudge and Charlie the cats, and Ruby and Chevy the pit bulls) cruised from Stamford CT to Albany NY to Green Cove Springs FL (south of Jacksonville). This was the cruise of a lifetime for us. What a hoot! We spent about two years just meandering south, leaving when we didn't care for a place, and staying when we did.
Along the way I somehow became a photographer.
We finally decided we did our cruise and it was time for a new adventure. We sold Drift Away and bought ten acres of land deep in the forest of the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. We started prepping the land to build. We had a few acres cleared, a well drilled, built a couple of outbuildings, and started digging a foundation. I intended to build the house myself, another thing I wanted to do. Well, a neck breaking accident with a tree ended that. So the land is for sale, we live in Florida, and I am an author with five books published and I'm working on my sixth.
The last book is "The Voyage of Drift Away: Stamford to Annapolis" and the one I'm writing now will be "The Voyage of Drift Away: Annapolis to Jacksonville". The other four are about Sasquatch.
Oh... did I mention that Sasquatch are a real thing? Yes. Yes they are. And they are amazing to interact with.
Anyhow, it is good to see old names here, and I'm going to try to take writing breaks and pop in here more often and learn who all you new guys are.
Life is good. No matter what happens, make the most of it. Even if you wind up in a trawler.