I HATE SHOES

I got a reply to a post a couple of weeks ago from Bill, a guy who was taking his Allied Seawind through Newport. We met up that Saturday and spend the morning touring each others sister sailboats. His is a later model, 1968 if I remember correctly, with some nice paint and interior furnishings; see the pictures below. It's amazing what some new paint and some cushions will do for the aesthetics of a boat! Soveraine  isn't quite there yet though. The bowsprit is off (see below) and the new wood is in Maine awaiting my construction. After that I'll dive into the chain plate issue as well as the electrical rewiring (interior and nav lights, VHF, stereo, battery charger, etc) and then follow with interior paint and cushions. Let the winter of boat productivity begin!

No matter what the activity, there are always different subsets of people who prefer one aspect of it over another. Take something close to your everyday life like driving, for example. You have the simple commuter who uses a car to get from point A to point B in the most cost-effective manner. A different person on the same commute may view his car as more of a status symbol and will drive some sort of ridiculously expensive piece of machinery to be stuck in the same traffic. Still others prefer to race their cars, some for fun and some professionally. Others like to "motor", and for this class of driver I like to view a late 1950s Jaguar humming along the windy roads of Vermont on a crisp fall day through the foliage. Then there is the entire group of commercial drivers who see the highways in terms of dollars earned per mile.  Sailing is no different. Most traditionally, and probably the longest running form of recreational sailing, would be yachting. It began in the...

It started with the dissolution of an engagement. It ends today, more or less, with the final scheduled charter on Weatherly  for the season. We sailed into Narragansett Bay last night after an 8 day trip to New York and Connecticut. There were 25-30 knot headwinds going there, and about the same on our stern coming home. Newport has cleared out; the kids are in school, beaches are vacant on the weekends and the tour boat numbers are dwindling. What a ride though, from arriving in Newport freshly single again back in early May, getting a quick job on Madeline , then onto an ill-fated stint with Sumurun , getting Soveraine , driving from Florida to New England, sailing Soveraine to Newport, and spending the last two and a half months on Weatherly, lots of different boats for a single season. As I said before, I'm ready for a break. Not that I'll be idle, starting this week I'm looking for a steady, and preferably indoors, job for the winter. I don't much mind ...