Bitten by the Sailing Bug!

Visiting my grandparent's cabin on a lake in Alabama during my growing up summers, I spent many days trying to get their little Sunfish sailboat to go where I wanted to go.  While I may not have developed skills to carry me across vast oceans, the sailing bug was firmly planted.  Shortly after Angela and I got married we moved Mount Pleasant, SC...just across the Cooper River from Charleston.  As young newly weds with few earthly possessions, we decided living on a sailboat made sense...so we connected with a boat broker and began our search.  It wasn't long before we had our hearts set on a 43' Young Sun that had been abandoned after hurricane Hugo.  Our helpful broker informed us all we had to do was pay 2-years worth of dockage to the marina and we could take ownership.  We began to spend some late afternoons on this beautiful boat clearing out the trash and getting things ready for our big move.  I can still remember the night we sat down to fill out the papers for a bank loan...when our attention was drawn to the local news.  Right there...the lead story in "The Low Country's Most Wanted" was our boat broker.  His arrest brought his career to a close as well as our dream of living aboard this beautiful boat.  Of course, several months later we moved from the Charleston area to the Charlotte, NC area...which would not have been a good place for that boat!

When our daughter was about 6-months old, my wife and I drove to Lake Norman, outside of Charlotte, NC, to look at a sailboat.  As we walked down the dock, with our little daughter in the baby carrier, a big smile clearly appeared on her little face when we stood in front of the boat.  We took that as a sign and we bought our first sailboat...a MacGregor 21.  We sailed "many a mile" on the narrow Lake Wiley as we learned a lot of things to do...and not to do...when sailing.  Most of all, we learned the pure, simple joy of being on a boat.  Our big trip in this boat was pulling it down to Charleston where we sailed from the Ashley Marina, out of the harbor, and around Sullivan's Island/Isle of Palms...spending the night at the Isle of Palm's Marina.  Not a bad trip in that little boat.

 

After seminary we moved to Hampstead, NC, outside of Wilmington.  Shortly afterwards I saw a Catalina 22 on the side of the road...which we promptly bought and then sold our MacGregor.  This Catalina 22 was a much better boat and carried us and our 2 kids on plenty of adventures.  We typically pulled it to Wrightsville Beach where we would put in, go out Masonboro inlet, and sail up and down Wrightsville Beach...open ocean!  Well...at least to us!  Our big trip in this boat did not involve many miles...but many smiles and great memories.  We pulled it down to Southport where we put in and sailed to Bald Head Island where my wife and I, along with our two kids, spent a week on this little boat playing games and exploring this quiet island.  This is still one of the vacations our kids talk about.

 

When we moved to the mountains of North Carolina in the winter of 2005, we took our boat with us and put it on Watauga Lake...but a year later we sold it.  But after 15-years of being boatless and our kids grown and gone...the bug hit us again.  Now living in Whiteville, NC we were only about an hour from Southport or Little River, so our goal was a boat in the 30-35 foot range that we could weekend on.  We began looking pretty seriously in the spring of 2021 for our "dream boat".  The lesson we learned was that boats are pretty easy to come by...but finding an available slip for a boat is another matter altogether!  Each time we would find a boat and try to move forward with it...our search for a slip would bring it to a grinding halt.  Each time we would put our "dream" on hold.

A couple of Sunday afternoons ago we began to talk about getting a tailorable sailboat, and a vehicle we could pull it with, so we could get on the water with the breeze in our sails.  That same day I came across a Craigslist ad for a 1984 Catalina 25...slip included.  Not our dream boat...but a boat I was familiar with and would fit our goals of being able to weekend on it.  (As long as I don't need to stand up straight in the cabin!)  Well, to bring this short story made long to a close, we looked at the boat and bought it!  And so, since about 5 days ago, once again we are boat owners...with all the joys and sorrows, ups and downs...that comes along with it!