Fast Forward to 2001

The Admiral at the helm of "Moon Chaser" our first sailboat on Canyon Lake, Texas

We Learned to Race from our friends at Hill Country Yacht Club

Our first bare boat cruise with our friends, Melodie and Jerry along with Katie & Greg on a 46' Jeaneau sold the dream.

 Nine days of pure heaven to us, I knew we could live that life!

Our Daughter Lia was in her last year of college. So I figured I could coach soccer for just 1 more year and that would pay for our first Sailboat. I started searching online. My first thought was to get like a Catalina 22 so we could be trailor sailors and check out different lakes and Gulf bays on the Texas coast. However, when Lynn saw the little sailboat that seemed perfect to me, she declared " If you think I am camping out in that thing you are crazy! Damn...I am going to have to buy a bigger boat!...So we found a perfect Catalina 250 at Canyon Lake Marina where there was a wonderful Hill country Yacht Club to teach us how to Sail, race and go on chartered cruises to the British Virgin Islands. Plus there was a Great little restaurant just above the marina "Papadocs". Lynn bit the hook and we bought "Moon Chaser" All the folks at HCYC and especially Charlie Teats and my mentor Derek Crawford taught us how to race and we were certified Canyon Lake Sailors...A great lake to learn how to sail on since the winds continuously change directions. 

The Seed 1970-73

Our Brother-in-Law's family owned a 32' Chris Craft on Eagle Mountain Lake just northwest of Ft. Worth TX.

He invited my best friend Martti and I to come out and crew for a Ft. Worth Boat Club Race. We became the crew along with Lynn, Martti's dad and of course my Sister Ginger. We raced every weekend for 3 years, I think we won 1 race in all that time during the Frost Bite Regatta when we were the only boat to finish the race....The other 2 boats who started that icy, windy day DNF'd. We must have had just a bit more Hot toddies in the thermos. My position all 3 years was on the Starboard jib sheet winch. When you are crew you do not "Sail" the boat. But is is not such a bad place to be after all every other tack you can just relax & enjoy the ride. However, unless you have control of the helm...you do not Fully experience Sailing. The second part to these racing weekends were a dinner in the yacht club resturant and staying over night in the lakehouse where we always seemed to eek out a party of just family, family & friends, or both. I filled my time on those late Saturday afternoons or early sunday mornings reading the stack of sailing magazines. It was the stories of sailing to incredible Carribean islands in the early 70's and finding nothing but Paradise with no one else in sight. And of course those stories of dissolving into the local island culture and becoming one with the natives while leaving no footprint behind. A time of little responsibility and time to dream.

Corpus Christi

Wand'rin Star in Port Townsend, WA

This is a start up Blog....Hard to know where to begin when we have worked so hard to just get through the Transition from Working Life to Cruising Life. With all things working as planned we will be Corpus living aboard Early August 2010. One last load of stuff to put in storage in Corpus. August will be spent trying to determine just what we need to bring aboard, what else we can jettison, and what is worthy of keeping in storage a bit longer. We believe we will be in Corpus just testing out our cruising skills for a year while the oil subsides in the Gulf of Mexico, there is plenty of cruising grounds to keep us entertained and continue to prepare Wand'rin Star to be up to the up coming challenge of coastal cruising the US and beyound. We have taken all of our sailing in small, safe, learning chunks...a step at a time, no hurry to get anywhere....just go. So for our followers, This blog may not of be of real interest to seasoned sailors till we actually depart from the Corpus area, but we will detail a bit of how we got to this point and share some of our sailing history for our friends and for those who do not yet own a boat and may be curious about how a couple who lived the American dream would toss off all their possessions and just move aboard a boat the moment they retire from their working careers. The sailing magazines never write of the hard part...the part of leaving your home of over 30 years, freinds, family, and material things you have to part with since they simply do not belong on a sailing vessel. A year of sometimes excruciating transition that again is never mentioned in the sailing articles. No, instead their stories simply begin by stating that " we sold all our stuff, bought a boat and departed for the beautiful islands where sunsets go on forever and tomorrow is more incredible than today, with a couple of storm stories thrown in that made the authors stronger than they were before. the Pic by the way is of the Captain and the Admiral aboard Wand'rin Star in Port Ludlow Washington where we were in route to Port Townsend WA. to have our little ship decommissioned for the ride back to Texas.