How, Why & When

Thanks for tuning in. This is my first entry and I hope you find this blog easy to read, eventually entertaining and maybe even instructive……..

Sailing is one of my passions. I have been sailing for about 7 years in small sailboats on inland waters. I am a cruiser, not a racer. As to why I began sailing, I guess I have always wanted to sail because of the sense of freedom that comes with the “idea” of sailing. You know, wind is free, and there are no “lanes” painted on the water (well not at first sight anyway). And as complicated as it can be, from an algebraic perspective (that is reduced to its lowest common denominator), it really is just Wind, Sail, Ropes & Pulleys.

In the mid 80s while living in New Orleans, a friend I knew from the “Port of Call”, took a few of us sailing one day. His boat, as near as I can remember, was about a 20 foot sloop and moored in Slidell, just east of New Orleans and across Lake Ponchartrain. We tacked NW & SW to get across the lake to New Orleans East and then ran with the wind back to Slidell. I still remember standing on the transom, holding on to the back stay when the wind came up. The bow dipped, the stern lifted and she just took off. I rode all the way back like that, like I was surfing a wave on a huge surf board. I remember it distinctly as my first experience.

I was no stranger to boats or water as I was doing my Land Surveying apprenticeship there and spent a lot of time in the bays and bayous surveying oyster beds, some time in a small aluminum flat boat taking annual soundings in the Mississippi River and some time in a Pirogue measuring the batture (the land between the River & the levee). But that was nothing like sailing!

My next sail was 10 years later, after I had moved to Phoenix and had taken a vacation back to the Gulf Coast to visit friends. While I was in Mobile visiting my buddy Jorge. Paul, the friend that introduced me to Jorge, took both of us out on his 18’ Catamaran around Dauphin Island. The three of us guys left from the North East end of the Island and sailed around to the South West end where we met the girls for lunch.                                                                                                                                                                          

I didn’t think much about sailing for a few years and then, in 2003, for some reason, I decided that I was going to get a boat and learn. So I traded an old junk car for an old junk Hobie Cat, thinking as I always do, that I could restore it to sailing condition. It didn’t take long to realize it was worthless. So I found my real first boat for $200. A late 70s Hobie 14 Turbo (Turbo had a jib). I had the trampoline sewn as it had a vandalized slice in it. I put about $400 more into it. I watched the video that came with it; put it in the water in Tempe Town Lake in the mid Phoenix Metro area and it did exactly what the video said it would do. After getting what I thought was proficient, I took it up to Lake Pleasant, about 40 miles north of Phoenix. My first day in real wind, my first turtle. YAHOO! I was in heaven. I was hooked on sailing, plain and simple. Man did it fly across the water!  

That’s the how, why and when.