The Uncertain Sailor

I’ve decided that in this our fifth year of sailing the New England coast, I would finally dedicate a portion of my blog to our sailing adventures.

Five years ago my husband retired and before doing that decided that he wanted to sail from May through October.  Moving Belmira, our beautiful O’Day 290 from Colorado to Massachusetts was not feasible so he traveled east and bought our current vessel – a 36 foot Allied Princess ketch that we also named Belmira.  She needed a lot of work, but was the ocean going craft he felt we needed to be able to retire on.  He started a blog to track his adventures and you can read about these at Sailing Belmira (there's a link in the sidebar too).  Before I retired on April 1 of this year, I would join him for 3-4 weeks each summer and share in this adventure. 

Here's a picture of our home away from home:

I probably need to tell you a bit about my husband.  He turned 70 years old this year.  He does not do anything half way.  He is/has been a stained glass artist, a watercolor artist, a woodworker, a gardener and he gave each endeavor his all while he was doing it.  He is and has always been a musician (plays guitar, mandolin and is currently learning the fiddle).  He also likes to go fast – cars, boats, bicycles, and running.  He really enjoys doing yoga too (the extreme high temperature kind of course).

Now that I have retired, I can be with him more during the summer months while he’s living aboard our sailboat.  He has very grand plans for our times on the high seas and I have to be honest here, I’m not sure that I am cut out for this.  Unlike him, I do not like adrenaline rushes, I do not like going fast – I think my body is allergic to G-forces.  This makes me what I am calling an “uncertain sailor” – at best.

I do love certain things about living aboard a sailboat.  Most of the time I sleep much better and it is really good to just disconnect from everything for a while.  I’ve been here for nearly a week and we have been preparing to head downriver from the boat yard and hit the real water.  The boat has been undergoing major upgrades this year and was pretty much a workshop for the first two months he has been out here.  It looks great and has some new and wonderful improvements (with more to come before the season is over).  The entire deck was repainted and re-finished, the new bimini and dodger that were delivered at the close of last season are installed and gorgeous.  The radar mount that he built over the winter has been installed and works like a charm (now I just have to learn how to interpret what I see on it).  The refrigerator that he installed last season is working great as is the new deck hardware that brings all the lines back to the cockpit for easy access while sailing.  He’s working hard at setting up some of the new (to us) sails that will hopefully make moving across the water more efficient and easier.

I have decided to track my progress as I try to learn how to love this aspect of our life.  There will be a label here for these posts and I will tag each post accordingly so that you can skip these if you are only here for reports and pix of my other adventures.  You can click on the Uncertain Sailor label in the labels list to read just the posts that pertain to this.

Thanks for visiting! 

If you have any questions about the techniques or materials used in the work displayed on this blog, feel free to use the email link on the left and I will gladly answer your questions.