Picking a School

I've had an on again, off again interest in sailing for as long as I can remember. Of course, now that I have a good half century behind me and I'm starting to exhibit the deleterious effects of again, that's really not saying all that much.

I've had a few boats of my own, the most notable of which was a Nacra 18 catamaran. That boat never got used very much; the hassles of stepping the mast each and every time that I wanted to sail it, plus the work needed to restitch the seams of the trampoline made it more trouble than it was worth, considering the dearth of good sailing lakes in the land-locked Central Ohio region. For the most part, taking out a Hobie while vacationing at a Cancun resort has been the extent of my experience.

So, while opportunities to sail have been scant, the interest in it has always lain dormant in the back of my mind, kept at bay (so to speak) by multitudinous competing interests. There are only so many disposable hours in a week, after all, and most of those were devoted to other interests such as building and flying my own airplane.

A few years ago the idea came into my head that I might be able to leverage the immense power of the Internet to find a way to get into sailing in a more meaningful way. Ownership is still out of the question for both pecuniary and geographical reasons, but I thought that maybe a vacation charter would be attainable. There would, of course, be the incumbent challenge of convincing the family to climb aboard a small sailing vessel and endure cramped quarters and almost certain seasickness for the better part of a week to contend with, the thought of which eventually disabused me of that notion. The old Gilligan's Island TV show worked against my wishes as well; the ominous "Three hour tour......" would surely be running through the ladies minds. No, the sailing charter idea was not going to float. So to speak.

But....

I happened across the idea of a live-aboard sailing school during one of my internet surfing sessions.