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Shortly after obtaining my USCG Master 50-Ton, I got a 46′ Hunter, also docked in SD.
I think sailing vessels are very special, and whether you are aboard one I am playing tour guide on, as we enjoy a leisurely day on the bay, or I am delivering your prized-possession from one port to another, you should know that I am passionate about the vessel I am on, and I will treat her, her passengers and cargo, with love.
About 5 years later I would move to Las Vegas and take the cat with me… but my new wife would not let the Hobie live in our garage and the Las Vegas sun is not kind to fiberglass, so I sold her.
I continued to try to sail when I could and slowly, for me, racing small boats gave way to relaxing on larger boats.
Several years passed and I bought a 28′ Columbia in Long Beach with the intent to dock it and use it in the San Diego Harbor. This was my first ‘delivery’ I guess you could say. I’ll admit a few things went wrong… but that is how you learn. We got her down to SD and I would travel from LV monthly to spend time on her. I didn’t race anymore, I had no where I wanted to be, other than on the water, sailing.
While we were setting up camp, before any campers arrived, the Waterfront Director announced that the camp had received a gift… 5 new lasers… we were SO excited. Now this “Camp Winton” was on Lower Bear River Reservoir, a little over an hour south of Lake Tahoe, and it was the classic boy’s camp on one side of the lake with a girl’s camp on the other, like in so many of the movies when I was growing up. Now the El Toro’s were fun, when they were the only boats we had, but imagine you had a crappy old pinto with a wobbly wheel, and now you have a Porche! That was the difference, and with the girls on the other side of the lake to show off to, we spent our weekends racing each other. These boats could turtle (turn completely upside-down), then we would right them, and sail away… all of the water flowing out of the boat as we picked up speed! We were so impressed by this ability compared to our previous boats, that we created races that included that skill. We would sail out past a bouy, kind of close to the other side of the lake so we could impress our future wives, turtle the laser, right it, race around another bouy, then to the finish bouy! I was so excited about sailing I bought one of the El Toro’s from the camp and took it back home with me. Ironically, it mostly sat, because I spent the next 2 summers at that camp racing lasers whenever I could and as close to the girl’s dock as we would dare. The next summer I left the El Toro behind at my parent’s house and moved to the Bay area where I got a real job and a part-time job teaching sailing at a little lake in Mountain View. I didn’t live in the Bay area too long, and eventually moved to L.A. After moving from apartment to apartment, I found a 16′ Hobie catamaran I wanted to own so I rented a house with a 2 car garage so I could store the cat!
Well, I passed the small boat sailing merit badge easily and looked forward to the following summer, when I would get another week of sailing. I loved it so much, the following summer (now 16) I applied for and was hired as waterfront staff for the camp, teaching the skills I had learned in previous summers and sailing all summer long.
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