I HATE SHOES

A year to the day after declaring Winchelsea dead (to me and my situation), I am living aboard again. She is Alaina's father's Gulf Star 41; a heavy, solid cruising boat with a well appointed, yet simple, interior. He has kept her in Ft. Myers for the past few years while restoring and improving some of the more aged parts of the vessel. Allowing me to live aboard in Sarasota is mutually beneficial; he has wanted to keep her in Sarasota for a season ever since he got the yacht and it is pretty pricey to keep a boat at Marina Jacks. This way, he'll have someone with experience to watch over her and complete a few projects and I'll have a place to live in Sarasota, and thank God, on a boat again. We dropped the hook here yesterday after coming up outside of Sanibel and Captiva islands and into Venice inlet. It was a two day trip with a stop near Cabbage Key; a picturesque island in Pine Island Sound just north of Ft. Myers. This is exactly what I came back east for: gu...

Recently, I've been spending a lot of time down in Ft. Myers with Alaina and her family. Her dad is really into sailing and has a handful of boats ranging from a small Sunfish to Gulfstar 41. I actually had no idea they had a Sunfish until I found it behind a tree, overturned, where it had apparently sat for over a decade. Luckily it was in the shade and the fiberglass was still decent and the sail was kept indoors. However, there were roots growing in and around the hull (some had even found their way through  the hull/deck joint), all the lines had to be replaced, the hardware was a complete mess and the rudder, daggerboard and tiller were all faded and cracked. Here is what she looked like after I turned her over and dragged it up to the house: So, first things first. Alaina started with a pressure washer: Next, she tackled the sailing hardware: In the meantime I tried to get the hand trailer out of a tree that had actually grown around it. A few strokes o...

We rode into the state of Florida on Saturday, after a long, winding road trip through the west. Out of San Diego, we made our way north to Hollister to visit Alaina's grandmother, then moved on to San Francisco to see a friend. We headed east next, to Lake Tahoe, where we camped and hiked for a few days (and tried to swim, but damn was that cold) before going to Reno to see another Florida face. He took us down the Truckee River that flows right through downtown, a highlight of the trip. We drove south next, through Nevada, past Las Vegas and spent the night at a hotel/casino near the Hoover Dam ($20 per night with a "players club" discount, no gambling required!). We would have camped, but I had a wicked case of food poisoning due to consuming Hollandaise sauce that had been left out all day (oops). We then made our way into Arizona. People sometimes ask me, as an environmental engineer, if I think we will ever run out of space to landfill our waste in this country. I c...

I'm back in San Diego with another delivery notch in my belt. It feels pretty great to be actually making a (albeit very modest) living out of deliveries. But, steadier work is why I'm moving to Key West for the winter. I've got just enough cash to get myself back to the east coast, which should take place later this month. Alaina and I plan to stop in San Francisco to see friends and family as well as camp in the Tahoe area and in Yosemite National Park before heading directly back east. Again, the west coast has been a fun experience for the season, but the beautiful weather isn't quite worth the struggle of inconsistent work and distance from friends and family. It doesn't look like I'll be heading to Newport for the end of this season. However, a friend of mine just bought a Tartan 27 in Annapolis and he needs a hand bringing it back to New England. If the timing works out, we might do that, but I think he wants it there sooner than later this month. As fo...

We departed Ketchikan on Tuesday and we just got into Port McNeill in British Columbia. I'm back on Terrapin Flyer  as we make our way down to Seattle over the course of the next week or so. The crew is great again, Alex has excellent friends. This time I am travelling with a former public defender in Palo Alto, CA and his wife who is a professor at Stanford. Great people with great conversation. The food is top notch again as well, with shrimp scampi, curried cous cous with tuna and other great dishes. The series of straits and fjords and the islands between them make up this part of the world, from Glacier Bay down to Washington state, called the inside passages. We deviated from them yesterday to make up for lost time and went outside in the Pacific and came back in on the north side of Vancouver Island. The forecast was calling for seas of 1 meter or less (note the metric system up here, sophisticated) and winds up to 25 knots. Totally doable in a Hylas 49. Except for we...

Last week I was called by the local sailboat rental company that has my name on their list of skippers and they asked me to take a boat out in a corporate charter/regatta. It's not a regatta in the traditional sense of the word, but more of Proctor and Gamble renting out literally 26 high-end sailboats for a "retreat" for their desk monkeys. As the race coordinator was going over the course with the skippers, I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me. He happened to have started in Key West awhile back and I was asking him about schooners down there. He said Newport was the place to be and that his brother worked on one there, as well as being the captain for Dorade  (read that link, its an amazing boat). I was stunned and asked him, "wait a second, are you Green's brother Jesse?? I've used your Port Supply account!" Yes, I was speaking with none other than the brother of the person who was the captain of Aquidneck, lived literally "next ...

San Diego was fun for the summer, but a lack of work and being too far from friends and family is moving me back to the east coast. The southern California sailing community doesn't have the pedigree, reverence, depth or, to be flat honest, know-how and sailing knowledge that I was surrounded by back east, especially Newport. Not to say I didn't grow as a sailor out here; I did my first big blue water ocean crossing as well as my first experiences as a charter boat captain. The plan is to get outta dodge by mid August and either finish the season in Newport/New York or head down to Key West to catch the start of the winter season there. They have half a dozen schooners, another handful of catamarans and (gulp) some parasailing motor boats. I have no qualms driving a motor boat if all other options are exhausted and the price is right. Jazz  is now for sale. She's served me well, providing a place to live at about half the cost of renting in the same areas, and a few day s...