Dear All,
As I joined the forum only on the 30th December and have already started
posting replies prior to introducing myself (not sure if this is bad "netiquette" or not), i thought it only good manners to post at the start of the new year.
I originally hail from North Yorkshire,
England, and my wife from
Houston,
Texas. In either place, sailing is about as inaccessible on a daily basis as golf greens in Antartica.
We spent the first few years here on the
west coast of
Norway watching out of our office windows as people sailed passed with the
children on board, in the fjord, during the middle of the
work day: waving and smiling, and leading me to wonder, "what am i doing wrong?"
Eventhough we've lived in
Norway since 1998, and there are boats lining the shores at every turn, we only got around to starting sailing during the spring of 2007. We started off with a 4 day "never get off the boat" intensive course which saw us sailing at night through the inlets and fjords to Haugesund, finally
mooring up at 1am (Norway has outstanding coastal nav/sector light coverage), then out to Utsira in the North sea and back to the islands. From that moment on we were smitten. We've been mostly chartering
bareboat for 2-3weeks at a time in the
med since while taking further courses and SRC/VHF etc.
Counting the weekends until the next summer holiday away on a
charter made us both wish for something more frequent and permenant.
After spending 3 years running the numbers for any type of vessel we could find on the market, we took the plunge just before
Christmas and we're now expecting to have our own
boat here by early March, just in time for the kinder part of the sailing season, and our 9month old son to need a life-strop to stop him crawling
overboard: our practice of bungee-ing him to any surface while underway was always going to be a shortlived solution.
We've already enjoyed the volume of good information gleened from reading the
forums and hope we can contribute in whatever way in the coming years - as we slowly but surely gain the knowledge and experience required to take the next, but inevitable step, towards a life aboard.
All the best!
Phil
Mrs. Rain Dog~Ocean Girl
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