Other People's Boats

I learned to sail in my Dad's boats. He had a small boat similar to a Sunfish, and a 14' boat. I did a certain amount of sailing on Lake Minchumina in Dad's boats.

In 1985 Dad rented a 48' ketch in Hawaii and took the whole family sailing. We sailed to Molakai, Lanai, and Maui.  That was Great Fun J

My Boats

When I was 6 Dad said he would buy me a small sailboat (a Sunfish) when I could swim half a mile. Naturally I worked really hard on this, and I managed to succeed when I was 7. I basically learened to sail in the Sunfish in front of our house.

In June of 1986 I bought a 26 foot Reinell sailboat named the Red Rover. As it needed a considerable amount of work I brought it to Fairbanks for a year. The next summer I moved the boat to Valdez. Thus began my love affair with Prince William Sound. Since that summer I was down there every summer to go sailing until I had a major arguement with the harbormaster (but that is another story, under Acrux).

I did a huge amount of wandering around Prince William Sound with the Red Rover. This turned out to be an ideal boat for this kind of exploring; easy to handle, slipped into and out of small places and (for me anyhow) comfortable to live on.

In the spring of 1992 I bought a 42 foot trimaran sailboat named the Acrux. The first summer I couldn't do very much sailing with the new boat because I didn't have a motor for it. The next summer I put a motor mount on the boat and got a little more mobile. I took a couple of short trips, but did not have time to get much farther out than about 35 miles out. In the summer of 1994 I went on several trips. The first one was somewhat disappointing for a number of things went wrong and instead of making it down into the Gulf of Alaska I scarcely made it 20 miles out. So instead of spending 5 days sailing south I hung out in Sawmill Bay. (The problem was a wire than hung half way up the main mast.) During the summer of 1995 I took several more trips. And a fairly problem prone trip in 1996. This turned out to be the last trip I took it out on for several years, because the fiberglass de-laminated from parts of both outriggers. During the summer of 1998 I repaired one of the outriggers.

Some of these adventures with the Acrux are in my logbooks, linked off the Acrux main page.

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