One the things about having a blog is being to write about the various hobbies and recreations I pick up. I started blogging in August of 2004, so you all missed my starting fly fishing, which I still do but less frequently, and golf, which I never do anymore. With the latter I decided that I really didn’t have time but it would be better to at least try it before I retired. Since retirement seems a long way off, it will be some time until I get back to those clubs.
Once hobby that I am not starting but returning to is sailing. I sailed when I was a teenager in a little unsinkable boat called a Sunflower. I bought it for a few hundred dollars in the 1970s and then carried it around on top of my mom’s Toyota Corolla.
As you can see from the photo, it had a single sail. It also had a centerboard and a simple rudder, so it was no trouble running it right up to and then on to a beach. My primary memory of it was running up a rather long lake only to have the wind completely die, forcing a very slow paddle back to where I had parked the car.
I didn’t sail much again until I was in graduate school. I was in the Adirondacks visiting my future wife Judith and her family at the lakeside cabin they had rented. The cabin—excuse me, “camp”—came with a Sunfish sailboat and I took Judith out on it, being the cool, experienced sailor I was.
We sailed around for a while but then I noticed that the steering had deteriorated. Then I realized that the rudder wasn’t attached. It wasn’t a simple question of it slipping out: the bolts holding the rudder assembly had unscrewed themselves and dropped into the lake.
We were only a hundred meters or so from shore, so I used the rudder as a paddle to get us back. My future father-in-law swam out to help tow us in, another indelible memory.
After a delay of more than 25 years, I’ve decided to try again. I live in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York about an hour south of Lake Ontario. We’ve got water and we’ve got lakes. I don’t think it makes sense to wait another 20 years to sail again. Therefore, I bought a boat.
In a few days I’ll be driving down to Chautauqua Lake to pick up my new-to-me but used 1988 Catalina 22 sailboat. It’s at the small end of cruisers, the so-called pocket cruiser class. This also means it is trailerable, and that’s how I will get it home.
While it would be possible to trailer it from lake to lake, I’ve been told repeatedly that this gets old fast. The summer is half over though, so I don’t think I’ll worry about finding a slip for it unless something comes along. During the winter I’ll look at my options.
I’m not likely to sail the boat for a couple of weeks after I get it because of our family schedule. I plan to put the boat in the backyard away from trees and power lines and practice rigging and unrigging it several times. I’ll have plenty of opportunity to look foolish after that, but at least I can work some things out ahead of time.
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