I HATE SHOES

First and foremost Sunday marked the first true sign, in my eyes at least, that the sailing season had begun and winter has officially kicked it: we went for a sail. Green's charter business On Watch Sailing  is open for customers and to shake things out after a long, cold and snowy winter he invited myself and Elizabeth to join him and his family on Lyra , their Reliance 44. We sailed down to Hammersmith Farm and up under the Newport bridge and got some great pics for his website. The shrink wrap came off Saturday. After nearly 5 months guarded from the elements of a New England winter that included a blizzard in the top five most severe of all time, a half dozen snow storms and lots of the delightful "wintery mix", she emerged unscathed. I wish I had the opportunity to paint the decks or something before her unveiling  but most of my projects this winter happened below. Most recently I completely redid the head, which started a few mo

When I first bought Winchelsea  over three years ago, I'll admit it was on kind of an impulse. I knew my roommates were terrible and I hated my job, the sailboat was my ticket out of both. I had been reading about the lifestyle of cruising and voyaging since I had broken my knee the July previous (this was the summer of '09, I was still driving the desk at the engineering firm), which all started with Slocum's iconic  Sailing Alone Around the World . I read a lot of how-to books covering the technical aspects of sailing and the life aquatic aboard a boat, but they would only sometimes touch on the "why", outside of picturesque sunsets and pina coladas. Bernard Moitessier was my first inspiration outside the realm of conventional cruisers (which is obvious to anyone who knows me well). He starts voyaging to escape the chaos of Indochina during World War II, and in his later works he starts to develop his "why" as a spiritual quest dealing with some demo