Although I have never really sailed, I have pretty much always wanted a sailboat. My father had a small sailboat when I was a kid, although we didn't use it much. He, however, had dreams of owning a bigger sailboat. As a teenager, I read Chapman Piloting & Seamanship cover to cover.
After looking at the possibilities for sail boats, I decided that either I wanted a 70' sloop or ketch with staterooms and a crew, or, more realistically, a 20' to 24' sloop with a swing keel that fit on a trailer. I figured that a 20-24' boat wasn't going to capsize frequently, and would be suitable for sailing anywhere except open ocean. (Ernest Shackleton sailed a 22' boat 800 miles across the open ocean, but he really did not have a choice.)
After examining the options, I decided that a Catalina 22 was about exactly the right boat. It had sleek lines, and was easily trailerable. Some 30 years+ later my wife and I now own one.
This blog and the associated articles will chronicle our experiences with purchasing, owning, maintaining, and sailing this boat. We intend this to be a a place where we can post what we have learned as a resource to others. We will answer the stupid questions that everyone that has owned a boat before already knows, because we just asked that stupid question and had to find the answer. We will link to other content on the web that we find useful. We will also write all the standard stuff that goes into a captain's log, although we will use Gregorian dates instead of stardates, to the dismay of my Star Trek fanatic wife.
We have chosen to use a very loose definition of a yacht for the name of this blog. Some definitions of "yacht" pick an arbitrary size and state that any vessel shorter than that is a boat and not a yacht. The definition we chose is simply "a vessel used for private cruising, racing, or other noncommercial purposes". I would argue that the difference is whether it has an enclosed cabin allowing comfortable overnight accommodations. In any case, regardless of the size of the vessel, the act of having one is "yachting".
We are both pretty experienced "computer people", so where it makes sense, we will provide software tools that will help with maintaining a boat.
