My husband Curt is true to the Jimmy Buffet song, "a son of a son of a sailor." He caught the sailing bug at young age sailing on his grandfather's bright orange Snark in Florida. Ok, so everyone has to start somewhere....even on a bright orange Snark. He was also the son of a sailor. His father, Calvin, was a Naval officer on the U.S.S. Forrestal during the 1960's (coincidentally, this massive aircraft carrier is located in Naval mothballs, just a few miles down the road from us in Newport, RI).
Curt moved up (ok, baby steps here) from the Snark to a windsurfer in college, along with his stepfather's 16' Chrysler sailboat on Columbia Lake in CT. Windsurfing became an obsession, and when I met Curt he was in deep. I remember many times while dating sitting on the shore with a good book of some obscure lake or pond in upstate NY while he had blast doing his best imitation of a rocket ship on the water. From the small sailboats and windsurfing, Curt got a feel for the wind and the physics of what makes a vessel move...fast...
As for me, I grew up in the mountains of VT. I learned to swim at Crystal Lake in Barton, VT and my family visited Maine in the summer. I have always loved the water. Lake water, pond water, salt water, pools...Whatever.
Well, back to the story...Shortly after we got married, on a fateful Saturday morning over coffee, I said, "Why don't we get a sailboat? Something we could both enjoy and something that we could even share with friends and family?" Windsurfing was not going to be something I was ever going to enjoy. It also seemed to me a solo experience - even lonely.
It took about 1/10th of a second for Curt to warm up to the idea of getting a sailboat of his own. That Saturday we scoured a few yacht yards in upstate New York without a clue as to what we were looking for. And that is how our "life aquatic" began.
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