About my blog

What is this blog about?  This blog is about sailing and fun on the water.  I have been on the water my whole life.  Growing up I lived across the highway from Watts Bar Lake formed by the Clinch, Emory and Tennessee Rivers.  My earliest lake memories are going fishing with my Grandfather in a little john boat with a very loud ancient two stroke motor.  That old motor smoked so much I remember getting a little nauseous before we finally reached the spot he wanted to fish.  My brother and I caught our first fish on that trip.  Somewhere I’ve got a picture that maybe I’ll post someday.  Anyway after that my brother and I started fishing all the time.  We were probably only nine and seven years old when we would cross the highway by ourselves with fishing rods and a tackle box that our Grandfather bought us, to fish until well after dark.  It was a different time, kinda like growing up in Mayberry.  Kids that young could safely wander the town and the river.  Anyway other than going out on Granddad's little fishing boat my preteen lake time was mainly fishing.  That changed when I went to summer Boy Scout camp.  At the camp they had canoes, row boats and most important of all sail boats!   http://www.campbucktoms.com/aquatics.html
That summer I got the merit badges for all three of them, but the one that was the most fun to me was sailing.  I talked about it a lot.  The very next year my Dad, who I think got the sailing bug not so much from me but from Jimmy Buffett’s music, bought a 15 foot O’day Javelin Day Sailor. 

Dad’s original blue Javelin day sailor in the foreground. 

Dad's boat moored on Watts Bar Lake with a few friends

Dad’s first few sailing trips were with our neighbor, an experienced sailor.  However, the real learning occurred when Dad and I took the boat out ourselves.  We learned sailing the hard way.  For example our first trip together we towed it to our local park that had a good ramp.  We raised the mast, rigged the sails, mounted the tiller and the rudder.  However we were so new that we didn’t notice that the rudder had two attachment points to the boat a top one and a bottom one.  Satisfied that we had done everything right,  we launched, raised the sails and headed out.  For the first few minutes we sailed beautifully like we knew what we were doing.  The reason we did so well is we just let the wind fill the sails and tightened the main sheet and let the wind blow us in the direction it wanted.  The problem came when the opposite shore loomed and we needed to change direction.  We pushed the tiller over to turn the boat and nothing happened!  So we loosened the main sheet to slow the boat.  Just then the wind shifted  direction, miraculously away from the approaching shore.  We tightened the main sheet and off we went.  We thought “okay that was a fluke” we know what we are doing now.  However as we approached the shore where the ramp was located the same problem happened again!  This time we did not get a fortuitous wind shift.  No matter how we turned the tiller, the rudder just did not respond.  We ended up pushed against the shore.  Unable to figure out our problem we lowered the sails.  I jumped into the water and walked the boat all the way along the shore and the park back to the ramp.  It was probably a 1/4 mile and of course the park was full of people who wondered why the heck I was dragging a boat rather than riding in it!  It was embarrassing and of course my Dad was pissed off!  Once the boat was back on the trailer we immediately saw what caused our problem.  The rudder was only attached at the top point which meant the tiller felt normal like we were actually moving the rudder.  However since the bottom of the rudder was not attached it just floated wherever it felt like regardless of the tiller position.  A hard lesson, and we were so beat and humiliated we decided to wait for another day to try again.  In spite of that, the few minutes of good sailing that we had were enough to make us want to keep going.  From that rather rough start and my learning to sail at Boy Scout camp came my love of sailing.

This blog is going to be about my family and the boat we sail now, how we came to the decision to buy this particular boat, the trips we’ve taken, modifications we’ve made to the boat and whatever else I feel like rambling about.  But the main thing I hope to accomplish as trite as it may sound is to give back to the online sailing community whose blogs, pictures, stories and videos inspired me to buy the boat and join them in their adventures and maybe just maybe inspire someone else to go sailing.