Middle Watch Musings
• Mar. 20, 2007 - The Beginning
It has long been a dream of mine to run away to sea on a small boat. When I was very young our family would spend a lot of time camping, boating and fishing. It always seemed to me that fun was always linked to boats. I learned to sail on a small flat board with a lateen rig that my Dad built. He called it a Buckboard. It was sorta the forerunner of a windsurfer. In my mind, as I sailed around the lake, I was at various times a pirate, explorer or racer. I read the classic stories of kids and boats, and I longed for a life at sea.
I eventually joined the Navy and spent a great chunk of my adult life at sea in warships doing various jobs ranging from watchkeeper to Captain. It seemed, as my career progressed, the boats I went to sea on got smaller and smaller culminating in a 100 foot Naval yacht that I commanded. About the same time I took that job, I bought a small sailboat, a Ranger 26, to teach my wife Nancy to sail and to have a little fun. The idea was to see if she could ever like sailing and if she would maybe run away with me sometime.
The Ranger was a success but it was not the boat for my grand plan. In my endless search for the perfect boat to run away on, I eventually stumbled upon Plumper II, a Truant 33, designed by Bill Garden and specifically built for sailing the Pacific NW. It is now ours.
The remaining stumbling blocks were all the same things that stop everyone from running away. We had kids, a dog, a house and all the stuff that keeps you with your nose to the grindstone. Well life ticked on, the kids left, the dog died and I am now quitting my job at the grand old age of 51 just to run away to sea for a few months.
Follow along with my challenges and adventures here over the next few months.
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• Mar. 22, 2007 - Well done ..........
Regards
JOHN