Sailing

I always had a vague interest in sailing, but this interest was solidified by visits to my sister-in-law and her husband. Rick is a very competitive multi-hull sailer in Minnesota. It didn't take many times out on his boat before I was hooked. That lead to my purchase of a Hobie 16, and many years sailing it on prairie reservoirs in Colorado.

Since moving to Seattle, I've taken up sailing keel-boats in Puget Sound. In addition to sailing, my wife and I have had a chance to explore other maritime related activities. Some of them are listed below:

Cruising
The Seattle Sailing Club has a number of small boats: a Hunter 35, four Catalina 27's, a Newport 27, an Ericson 25+, four Merit 25's, and four Capri 22's. We've sailed on most of these at one time or other. The club has unlimited daysailing as part of the basic dues, and so far we've done better than our money's worth. I've also had the opportunity to sail on some other boats. My more extended cruises are described below.
Visiting ships
Racing
I crewed on Sunwood, an Olson 34 owned and skippered by Jim Jones. I've been aboard for most of the races entered since May 1994, including the Grand Prix Invitational (held in Seattle November 1994, in which we took 9th in our class of 23 entrants) and Pitch (held in Bellingham on Labor Day weekend, in which we took 1st in our group in 1996).
I crewed on Drop Out, a Cal 31, in Swiftsure '95. Unfortunately we didn't finish.
I later crewed on Anomaly, a Santa Cruz 50, in Swiftsure '98. I confess I don't recall how we finished, but we did the whole race.
I've also crewed on First Edition, a Humboldt 30, Viva, a Cal 40, and Tamerlane, a Stiletto.

I picked up a Garmin 38 for my Powell River to Seattle voyage and I'm now in the habit of recording each of my trips using the "track log" feature. When I get home from a trip, I dump the log and massage the data to chart the trip. You can see the results on the next page.