Old Sailing Friend swallowing the anchor

May 23, 2004
3,319
I'm in the market as were . Colonial Beach
My Uncle and Aunt spent a lot of time sailing the Chesapeake Bay area. It is his fault that I was bit by the cruising bug. I learned a lot of my knowledge on cruising from him. They have sailed to just about every corner in the Chesapeake Bay. Because they had a job that allowed it, college professors, they would often spend weeks and sometimes as long as a month out before they would go home for a week to make sure the house was okay and then go back out again. They have been doing this since I was 8 years old and he is the first person who took me sailing.

When I was doing a lot of my cruising in my last three sailboats I would often meet up with them in various places. We really liked hanging out at Solomons Island, Smith Creek, Prices Cove, and numerous other places.

I received a call last week that was sad to hear. He stated that he is putting his boat on the market. He and my Aunt feel like they are getting upwards in age and their confidence is suffering. He said it was a hard decision that they wrestled with for quite sometime. I understand what he is saying but it still hurts in some ways.

I knew that this day was coming. I was hoping to get my next boat while they were still cruising and have a few more memorable raft-ups. While they were out cruising and I was stuck at work I would often call them to warn them of weather that was approaching or just to hear what they were up to.

With my daughter being almost 5 months I am hopeful that she will enjoy sailing. I want to get her out sailing sooner than later but I am thinking that this season isn't the right time. Maybe next season will work out. Who knows but I can see that my buying budget will be pretty low, under about $9,000 most likely. I will stay small but not too small as my last cruising boat proved that I require a diesel, standing headroom, a separate head, and I prefer a wheel.

I guess my point is that Finally II, my Uncle's boat, will be on the market soon. He will no longer be cruising the Bay and that is a sad day. It reminds me of when I learned that Java Jim Seamans was no longer going to be sailing either (I miss him being out there too). Really, it takes some of the wind out of your sails to see friends that you sail with, meet up with, and enjoy no longer sailing.

Anyone else have similar thoughts?
 
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Mar 29, 2017
576
Hunter 30t 9805 littlecreek
Wait. What. So you buying Finally 2. And since he your uncle is he giving you a sweet payment plan
 
May 23, 2004
3,319
I'm in the market as were . Colonial Beach
I wish but she is far out of my budget these days. The $1000 a month daycare is eating me alive these days.
 
May 23, 2004
3,319
I'm in the market as were . Colonial Beach
Man, the raft-ups that I had with Jim were way too much fun. He was a live wire. He is a legend and his name will be spoken around the East Coast in the Sailing community for years!!
 
Oct 22, 2014
20,995
CAL 35 Cruiser #21 moored EVERETT WA
Sorry to hear the news. May your Christmas be a Merry one.
 
Jan 7, 2011
4,727
Oday 322 East Chicago, IN
My Uncle and Aunt spent a lot of time sailing the Chesapeake Bay area. It is his fault that I was bit by the cruising bug. I learned a lot of my knowledge on cruising from him. They have sailed to just about every corner in the Chesapeake Bay. Because they had a job that allowed it, college professors, they would often spend weeks and sometimes as long as a month out before they would go home for a week to make sure the house was okay and then go back out again. They have been doing this since I was 8 years old and he is the first person who took me sailing.

When I was doing a lot of my cruising in my last three sailboats I would often meet up with them in various places. We really liked hanging out at Solomons Island, Smith Creek, Prices Cove, and numerous other places.

I received a call last week that was sad to hear. He stated that he is putting his boat on the market. He and my Aunt feel like they are getting upwards in age and their confidence is suffering. He said it was a hard decision that they wrestled with for quite sometime. I understand what he is saying but it still hurts in some ways.

I knew that this day was coming. I was hoping to get my next boat while they were still cruising and have a few more memorable raft-ups. While they were out cruising and I was stuck at work I would often call them to warn them of weather that was approaching or just to hear what they were up to.

With my daughter being almost 5 months I am hopeful that she will enjoy sailing. I want to get her out sailing sooner than later but I am thinking that this season isn't the right time. Maybe next season will work out. Who knows but I can see that my buying budget will be pretty low, under about $9,000 most likely. I will stay small but not too small as my last cruising boat proved that I require a diesel, standing headroom, a separate head, and I prefer a wheel.

I guess my point is that Finally II, my Uncle's boat, will be on the market soon. He will no longer be cruising the Bay and that is a sad day. It reminds me of when I learned that Java Jim Seamans was no longer going to be sailing either (I miss him being out there too). Really, it takes some of the wind out of your sails to see friends that you sail with, meet up with, and enjoy no longer sailing.

Anyone else have similar thoughts?
What kind of boat? Sorry if I missed your avatar before.

Sad day for sure,

Greg
 
May 23, 2004
3,319
I'm in the market as were . Colonial Beach
They are selling their Catalina 34. They have had her for quite some time. Before that they had a Catalina 27 and that boat logged some serious mileage on the Chesapeake Bay. I think that they had the 27 for over 20 years.

Not sure what I will get when I get another sailboat. Budget will likely be under 10k so it will be a smaller cruiser. I know that I want a separate enclosed head, standing headroom, and a diesel.
 
Jun 8, 2004
10,024
-na -NA Anywhere USA
Crazy was given to me and I kept it for marketing purposes and it worked. Am I crazy to launch large boats with a crane over a bulkhead or bridges. Yes in a way but developed the skills quickly first with smaller boats and then larger. There is a lot learned but due to liability, I never will show or disclose how I did it as I do not want people to ask how from me.
 
Oct 19, 2017
7,733
O'Day 19 Littleton, NH
it takes some of the wind out of your sails to see friends that you sail with, meet up with, and enjoy no longer sailing.

Anyone else have similar thoughts?
My father has always been my hero. He's one of the greatest sailors I've ever met. He raised us three boys to the sea and we lived aboard for nearly 4 years when I was a kid. After resettling in the mountains of NH when I started high school, he continued to pursue his love of sailing. He started solo sailing and began sailing across the Atlantic until he eventually settled on a boat he thought was good for his round the world sail. The Old Man was often off on a sail to Europe or the Caribbean, my mother flying out to join him on one or two legs of a sail. He'd invite us to join him in one port or another. We'd sail a little with him.
He began entering races and regattas, doing very well. Sometimes even beating professional sailors in racing designs. He'd get lucky or was a canny tactician catching wind and avoiding wind shadows that others who should have known better missjudged.

When he got back from his circumnavigation, he soon decided enough of the sailing. Not long after that he gave up rock and ice climbing. He motorcycled across Europe, with old friends across the country, with my older brother to Alaska. After a couple of major spills he traded in his Victory for a jeep and called it his quad to one-up a friend who rode a trike.
Watching him succumb to bad knees and pain, giving up the former activities that he loved so much in favor of more cerebral pursuits was like experiencing the end of an era for me.

Today, he's on day four of a hospital stay for a moderate stroke. He had advanced directives not to perform heroic efforts to stay alive. He has a bad heart and had taken himself off all his heart and bp meds for several years prior to the stroke. We had to discuss the possibility that he wouldn't want a pace maker. The do nothing course was suggested to offer him at most, 3 months to live. Getting on to blood thinners would extend that to six months. A pacemaker could give the 83 year old man another 10 years or so. My mother has been amazingly strong. Luckily, he is recovering especially well and has been deemed competent to make his own decisions and the pace maker is looking like it isn't even necessary. He was still going to the gym for weight training 3 times a week.

He is friends with Webb Childs and has met and known other great sailors. His old friend Clark Mills even made it into the Sailor's Hall of Fame (I think they asked my mother to provide some pictures).

My greatest hope and wish is to get him out on Dragonfly for his first sail in over 4 years. I have a lot of work to do this Winter. I'll get there though.

It is the end of an era.

-Will (Dragonfly)
 
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FDL S2

.
Jun 29, 2014
469
S2 7.3 Fond du Lac
My father has always been my hero. He's one of the greatest sailors I've ever met. He raised us three boys to the sea and we lived aboard for nearly 4 years when I was a kid. After resettling in the mountains of NH when I started high school, he continued to pursue his love of sailing. He started solo sailing and began sailing across the Atlantic until he eventually settled on a boat he thought was good for his round the world sail. The Old Man was often off on a sail to Europe or the Caribbean, my mother flying out to join him on one or two legs of a sail. He'd invite us to join him in one port or another. We'd sail a little with him.
He began entering races and regattas, doing very well. Sometimes even beating professional sailors in racing designs. He'd get lucky or was a canny tactician catching wind and avoiding wind shadows that others who should have known better missjudged.

When he got back from his circumnavigation, he soon decided enough of the sailing. Not long after that he gave up rock and ice climbing. He motorcycled across Europe, with old friends across the country, with my older brother to Alaska. After a couple of major spills he traded in his Victory for a jeep and called it his quad to one-up a friend who rode a trike.
Watching him succumb to bad knees and pain, giving up the former activities that he loved so much in favor of more cerebral pursuits was like experiencing the end of an era for me.

Today, he's on day four of a hospital stay for a moderate stroke. He had advanced directives not to perform heroic efforts to stay alive. He has a bad heart and had taken himself off all his heart and bp meds for several years prior to the stroke. We had to discuss the possibility that he wouldn't want a pace maker. The do nothing course was suggested to offer him at most, 3 months to live. Getting on to blood thinners would extend that to six months. A pacemaker could give the 83 year old man another 10 years or so. My mother has been amazingly strong. Luckily, he is recovering especially well and has been deemed competent to make his own decisions and the pace maker is looking like it isn't even necessary. He was still going to the gym for weight training 3 times a week.

He is friends with Webb Childs and has met and known other great sailors. His old friend Clark Mills even made it into the Sailor's Hall of Fame (I think they asked my mother to provide some pictures).

My greatest hope and wish is to get him out on Dragonfly for his first sail in over 4 years. I have a lot of work to do this Winter. I'll get there though.

It is the end of an era.

-Will (Dragonfly)
Will, your father sounds like a cool guy who has lived-get him out on your boat!

My dad is my hero too. He is 84 and is a tough old son of a gun. He recently started to have pain in one of his shoulders, the doctor recommended cortisone shots instead of surgery and dad was pissed because he was told he would only be able do his daily 1/2 to 1mile swim if he did a side stroke instead of a crawl-he wanted surgery. My mom, brother and I (who have all had shoulder surgery) were able to talk him out of it by explaining the several month recovery process.
This past weekend we had a family gathering and he was telling us about when he climbed Mt. Fuji and lived in Japan in the early 1960's as a civilian teacher. He has been in every continent but Antarctica, travelled across the US hitchhiking when he was a Marine and rode a motorcycle daily into his late 50's until he had accident-now he rides a lawn mower.
He was never a sailor, but loves the lake they have lived on for 54 years, swimming and boating and he taught my 4 brothers and me to love the water. He's a hell of a guy and I cherish every moment I spend with him.
 
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Oct 19, 2017
7,733
O'Day 19 Littleton, NH
Anyone else have similar thoughts
It's interesting that I have an emotional investment in both the activity/lifestyle of sailing and in those I know have enjoyed sailing, even names I only know from reading on a computer screen. Reading someone's post about their decision to give it up, to move on, sell and retire, feels sad to me.
I find myself exploring options to keep them in the game, as it were. I have no reason to feel this way, but there is a loss I feel when I know of someone giving up a life like that.
It could be that I see myself in this act. I feel my own morality, you could say. I have visions of a dream, either unrealized or cut short before I've finished. Or, it is analogous to the lost childhood that I loved so much. Maybe all of it. There is a desire in having company in my interests, even if I only know it's there rather than actually having that company near. Maybe it's symbolic of aging into a lost capacity. No one wants to go through the degradation of our physical prowess. To be forced to give such things up portends a future less rich in experience and fulfillment than remembered of the past. It doesn't have to be so, but it still feels so.

We are here, in the moment and our pasts are but memories, they feel different, but that's all that distinguishes memories of the past and imagination. The future holds only imagination with a feeling of expectation and maybe hope. When a cherished past is no longer the model for the future, when the course changes to leave behind those things we lived, I think we all feel a bitter loss at some level.

Bad Obsession, I have no connection or investment in the lives of your aunt and uncle except through reading your words here, and yet, I am saddened for their loss, for your loss, I feel it as though it were my loss. I can empathize. I have been through it before. I hope, this concluded chapter only leads to a new chapter that is the equal or better in your life.

Remember, a sailor will always be a sailor. Even living 40 years in the mountains won't change that. I know that from direct experience.

-Will (Dragonfly)
 
May 23, 2004
3,319
I'm in the market as were . Colonial Beach
Oh, I am sure that if I bought another sailboat tomorrow he would be game for helping me bring her home. That got us into a bit of trouble when I bought the Spirit of Liberty, my previous Catalina 30. We hit a full gale at Smith Point, the mouth of the Potomac River at the Chesapeake Bay. That was quite an adventure and both of us have that memory etched into our brains.

I did tease him about buying a land yacht. He isn't really sure what direction he will be going but he is one hell of a resource for cruising on the Chesapeake Bay (I could never convince him to write a book but he really could with some of his stories).

It was always fun to raft up with him and meet him at various spots. It made single handing a lot more pleasant as it can get a bit boring when you are single handing.

I guess we all experience these things with the people who we sail with.
 
Jun 8, 2004
10,024
-na -NA Anywhere USA
@jssailem
Funny thing whatthe owner of Catalina, Frank Butler, said in front of the dealers after singing a cat song to him. He said and I quote “I knew you were Crazy, but now I know you are Certifiable Nuts.” From a dull boring meeting everyone got a good laugh.
 
Oct 22, 2014
20,995
CAL 35 Cruiser #21 moored EVERETT WA
@Crazy Dave Condon I sure enjoyed the smiles when we had in Annapolis. Note: I maintained your deniability in my comment. :biggrin::liar:No sharing. What happens at the boat show stays at the boat show. ;)
 
Jun 8, 2004
10,024
-na -NA Anywhere USA
I do not mind mentioning that. Actually letting people laugh as this world is too serious is a plus. I am smarter than the average bear for what I did in sales and service. And other things. That meeting was dull and boring and many thanked me for an enjoyable meeting after that