50 years old.
Only have experience sailing small single-hand boats and Hobies and the like.
This year signing up for courses on the lake, planning to take
ASA 101, 103, and 104 right here on lake Lanier. As well as 105 which appears to be classroom only.
Then plan to spend the rest of the summer using the academy's rental fleet as I can't get another
boat on my
dock and can't get from my
dock to the sailable portion of the lake even if I could.
Later in the year or early next I plan to take the 106, 107, and 108 courses.
Assuming all of that goes as planned, and I like it, next year (or the year after more likely) I plan to take the RYA
offshore course out of Charleston and try my hand at the
ICC exam.
Too ambitious? If so I will back off, but the goal is to be insurable in between 5-10 years out.
Next order of business will be acquiring a
boat for the great loop, which is my plan to see if the wife is into
living aboard a boat on a trip with lots to see and relatively little 'open water' to deal with. She can even come and go easily enough if she needs a break from it (or me).
Assuming we survive that adventure and still love the boat idea, the next plan is to go to the
Caribbean for a while.
After that we may come back to the States for a complete once over to check the boat is good for a crossing and then go across to
Ireland and
England for a summer (the reason I want the
ICC rating). Depending on how late we stay and how that is going we may stay or put her up
on the hard and fly home for the
winter.
Now that's the plan, and it could come unglued at any point and I will be OK with that. But I am an
engineer and I need specs.
Right now I am eyeballing
Morgan 415 Out Islands. Their shallow
keel and completely protected skeg setup is appealing for the loop, and they are huge on the inside. This will let us have folks come visit, or just give us space since both of us claim the other snores on occasion.
I plan to buy a
project boat and do a complete
refit, the
engineer in me (and the budget) won't allow otherwise. The wife is always making fun of me because no matter what I buy or what condition it is in she claims I am never happy with it until I have taken it apart and put it back together.
There isn't a ton of sailing on the loop, so I am considering de-masting the boat of her full size
rigging and going to a steppable fractional setup for the loop. I'd probably add some meat and a tabernacle where the keel-stepped
mast penetration was through the
deck.
Did I come to the right place?
Re: n00b introduction
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