I have a 22' Catalina that I keep at small nearby lake. My step-father and I had a nice time on our first outing this year. Here are a few pictures. I really like the last one.

I love boats! Would like to get into sailing, but I already have way too many hobbies!

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That old man - he don't think like no old man...
Now I wouldn't want to be within 400 - 500 yards of one of them nuclear bombs when it goes off! WW1 Vet Old Man
"He's pinned under an outcropping of rock. Lucky for him, the rock kept the dirt from burying him alive."
If idiots could fly, this place would be an airport. And I'd be a TSA agent.
A bonified member of The Mystic Knights of The Sea, George P. Stevens, President. Andy Brown, Treasurer, Algonquin J. Calhoun, Legal Consultant.

That looks like some fun, right there.

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Is that your cup of tea?

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When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

Everybody matters or nobody matters.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

-An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

Mister, that's a ten-gallon hat on a twenty-gallon head.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

haha, yes it is my cup of tea. Very good eyes. The boat was named by the previous owner who sailed it for 20 years with his two daughters. Now it is mine and I'm sailing it with my two daughters. It makes me very happy and I only wish I could sail more often.

I used to have an 18 foot Capri by Catalina. We had a lot of fun on it, but I was ready to let it go. I think that if we had had it in a slip somewhere, we would have used it more.

In the first photo it looks like the motor is still in the water while under sail. Say it ain't so…

The motor is grey and lifted out of the water during sailing. When I took the picture we were actually motoring back into the dock so the engine had been lowered back into the water. Nice catch.

You have reached the utter depth of decadence when Tech finally catches up with five millennia of sailing progress, and you can finally tell all the world just what you are thinking at the time, while slugging out of a can of Orange Crush in your comfy and extremely well appointed Navigation station of your just ready to head off on any kind of whim at all, sloop.
Just as I'm doing right now. As many faults as Mavericks has, this new Macbook Air has just ducky Wifi, and I can hit the Marina hotspot 950 feet away without much effort, except at the very lowest of low tides.

I was walking the docks this morning when I finally met a man that I have wanted to meet for a long time, the owner of the famous Swede 55 "Contessa". (Unusual terminology here: the Swede 55 is actually only 53 feet long; the "55" refers to the amount of sail it is allowed to carry under Class Racing Rules, in square meters.)
We are about the same age, even though I felt only about 14 years old again.


"I've been wondering when we would finally meet. My name is Eustace. I have that little Beneteau up the docks, you've been to Hawaii, was it the Transpac..."
"Pacific Cup. Twice."
"I seem to remember that the Contessa was almost unbeatable on a beam reach, because the effective waterline lengthens and hull speed..."
"It does 15 knots. Newer boats do 20."

As I said, I was a babbling 14 year old again.
I then took my "Dollymop" out for a little practice. Really basic stuff- raising and lowering sails, reefing, having the wind blow my hat in the water, and under sail alone maneuvering around until I could boathook it back.
Unlike three decades back, now I was wearing full foul weather gear and a sailing harness with two tethers. Back then, a pair of cutoffs and the occasional dab of suntan lotion did just fine.

While coming back in, I saw that the Catalina 350 had finally been sold, and the new owners were taking it out, apparently for the first time. I had my eye on that Cat because davemachine mentioned that he might eventually want to move up.
How simple can it be? It was on a side tie, and the Useless One was barking out orders to She Who Gets Things Done concerning bow, stern, and spring lines. Finally, it was about three feet from the dock going nowhere when the Useless One slammed into gear and gunned it. The stern of the boat promptly swung to port and hit the dock hard.
Duffer.

Eustace

looks fun

How do you make a small fortune?






Start with a large fortune and then buy a boat.


B.O.A.T. = Break Out Another Thou$and.


The first boat I crewed was a beast. Ten's of thousands of shaft horsepower driven by twin steam turbines fed by a large heat source surrounded by lots of lead. Operating it was fun, but the owners insisted that I participate in other activities that gave me no joy.

I downsized to a 21' cuddy cabin until the inevitable 3-footitis took hold and then I upsized to a 24' cabin cruiser and spent many enjoyable weekends on the lake, escaping the mother-in-law who had come to live with us for the summer. When I moved overseas, the boat did not follow (nor the mother-in-law).

Now I am boatless and missing it, but enjoying the lack of drain on finances that it brings.

Quote
Lux Interior
How do you make a small fortune?






Start with a large fortune and then buy a boat.


B.O.A.T. = Break Out Another Thou$and.


The first boat I crewed was a beast. Ten's of thousands of shaft horsepower driven by twin steam turbines fed by a large heat source surrounded by lots of lead. Operating it was fun, but the owners insisted that I participate in other activities that gave me no joy.

I downsized to a 21' cuddy cabin until the inevitable 3-footitis took hold and then I upsized to a 24' cabin cruiser and spent many enjoyable weekends on the lake, escaping the mother-in-law who had come to live with us for the summer. When I moved overseas, the boat did not follow (nor the mother-in-law).

Now I am boatless and missing it, but enjoying the lack of drain on finances that it brings.

Much of what you just wrote is just terrific. You left just enough of the unsaid, unsaid.
Please keep it up, when time and reality permits.

It is quite clear that I'm not a powerboater, from all that I have written here so far, but I did spend some time with DiMaggio's boat.
Yes, that DiMaggio. It was a little cuddy cabin, and when keeping it from sinking finally proved impossible, and Joe was now gone, it found a little comfy berth on land, and it had a Plaque. (I wrote what was on the Plaque.)

A few years later, I found myself working with yet another DiMaggio, on a Liquid Helium cooled Goniometer Project. He kept mum about the name; they all did. (I've known a lot of DiMaggios over the years. Joe was before my time.) But when I mentioned the boat...
Uncle Joe took him out on it a lot, and Uncle Joe taught him all the basics of not catching fish.

Oh dear, the sky is lightening over the hatchway. Dawn is threatening to erupt. Time to put away a few thousand words judiciously written, and a few really good equations. (Transmission Line stuff. As much as I like a really good Plasma, that Plasma has to eventually go somewhere, somewhere preferably far out into Left Field.)

Eustace

I've had the boat about four years. Last year was my first experience throwing money into a hole int he water. About half the value of the boat (which isn't much) went into replacing old standing rigging and the associated deck hardware. There were some other problems also. Overall it was not a huge amount of money. If things go well I'd like to have it repainted this fall. The wood could use sprucing up but that's pretty minimal. Engine cover could use paint but that's just a can of spray paint. Overall it's a low maintenance boat. At least until I sink it.

Except for the babe and a guy 30 years younger, and reaching on a tropical breeze on a tropical sea,
here is me on my boat.

I've never been on a catamaran but they sure look like fun.

The first boat I crewed was a beast.

"Boat sailor" or ship.


It makes me very happy and I only wish I could sail more often.

It's a great name for a boat.

I used to "crew" on a friend's 28' sloop. It was great fun!

Love the sea, and sailing.

Congratulations that you get to sail when you can.

---

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

Everybody matters or nobody matters.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

-An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

Mister, that's a ten-gallon hat on a twenty-gallon head.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.