Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Sailor's Life For Me

The Lord of the Manor and I have a long history of boating. When I was about 13 my dad built a plywood sailboat from some plans in Popular Mechanics. I figure the boat must have looked a little like this one I found on the Internet. I sewed the sails out of who knows what. I'm sure I had no idea what I was doing, but we sailed that boat a lot out in the San Joaquin Delta and up at Camanche Lake. Out of all four kids I seemed to be most interested in sailing it.

The Lord of the Manor's family lived on a little canal right in the middle of town and had a ski boat at the dock in their back yard. They spent their summers messing about in small power boats; exploring, water skiing, and camping on a friend's island. When we were dating he taught me to water ski and we spent many summer evenings cutting through the sloughs on the glassy water.

When we were in our mid twenties a friend of ours suggested getting sailboats and going cruising. Hmmmmm, sounds interesting, so within two years we had sold our house, business, and car and took off to Mexico. We had to cut our trip short when the people who bought our house stopped making payments. We came home, recovered what we could, and swallowed the anchor again. We started another business, bought a house, had two kids, and tried to turn our backs on boating.

But nautical things still seemed to pervade our lives. We named our business Harbor Signs. We decorated our walls with photos of old sailboats. We collected kerosene lanterns, anchor lights, and nautical bits and bobs. This becket is on a sea chest that LOM made for Teen2 when she was little. We worked those beckets late at night after the girls had gone to bed using The Ashley Book of Knots for reference.

Here are the bits off our second sailboat Tilly Whim, a beautiful Laurent Giles design that sailed like a dream. After we sold it, successive owners let it go downhill and it was finally cut up and thrown away. The yard owner gave this to us later.

 Here is a photo of it on a mooring at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. It's the one in the middle with the green sail cover.

 And here is a photo of the young sailors who owned it. Can you believe we ever looked like this?

And here is a photo of the old sailors who are actually thinking of getting another sailboat and trying it again. What are they thinking?