Jump Ahead to now - 2006

OK, First I have to explain that Craig thought it was too weird for me to be writing in 3rd person. Why was I doing that? I think it was just because it didn't feel so self-centered, talking about somebody else. It was a little confusing though and I've been advised to be myself and think of this as a journal that reaches out to others.

SO I've jumped ahead to now, this Easter weekend, where we had pelting rain, snow, sleet and a great day on Fern Ridge Reservoir, just west of Eugene.
THIS weekend was too important not to document now, since we spent our first night in our MacGregor 26 motorsailor on waters that could rival the waves of an ocean any day. (ok, maybe I'm embellishing a little but this boat was tossing me around just a little more than I wanted to be tossed!)

Yes, we sold our West Wight Potter this last December, the second day it was listed on craigslist.org. We were so shocked that it went so fast and the guy didn't even dicker on the price. It was a great deal and a great boat so we all felt good about it. We had been looking for a boat that could serve all our purposes. Of course there isn't such a thing since we have so many purposes. Anyway, we wanted a boat we could sail, sleep in comfortably and have room for at least 2 more people to sleep too and be able to pull our kids on inner tubes or skis or whatever.

The MacGregor 26 Motorsailor fit the bill and after much shopping around we ended up buying from Blue Water Yachts in Seattle. The people we dealt with were very nice and made us feel very comfortable. Captain Ray took us out for our demo the weekend we picked it up and believe it or not the evening was beautiful. There we were on a February evening getting a demo on Ray's boat while looking at the awesome Seattle skyline all lit up. We brought the boat home that weekend and it sat in our front driveway for a month! At one point it even had snow on it. (a very sad sight for Captain Craig).
Finally we got it in the water on Easter weekend and actually slept in it that Friday night. Now I'm not saying we sailed or even motored that weekend since the weather was so nasty it felt like Christmas, not Easter. But we had a great time getting our stuff from the 19' boat put away in our new 26' boat and the main bed was excellent for sleeping. And being the geeks that we are we even watched a movie while being rocked from side to side by the winds. It may have been nasty weather but it rocked us to sleep and made our first night very memorable.....

Their First Sailboat and the San Juan Islands

OK, so they didn't have a sailboat yet, but Craig had to make sure that Jannie was the adventurer he had hoped she would be. The San Juan Islands turned out to be a great test of the type of nautical nonsense Jannie would be up for. They took their car on the ferry out of Port Angeles, Washington to the port of Friday Harbor on the island of San Juan. It was May and the weather turned out to be beautiful.
SO the hotel Craig found on-line turned out to be a big disappointment since it advertised a hot tub. But when they checked in it seemed that it had a leak, and it takes weeks to get someone to come to the islands to fix anything so of course it wasn't working.
Oh well, off they went to check out the harbor, drooling over all the boats and wishing they had one. Next they drove around the whole island, walked around Roche Harbor Resort, hiking down to Wescott Bay and all around Posey Island State Park. The history of this island alone was awesome and of course with water everywhere you look there were boats, who could ask for more....
BY the time Craig and Jannie got home they were planning their next trip to the San Juan's in a boat of their own.
Craig didn't waste any time searching for the right boat and soon they were the proud owners of a 19' West Wight Potter. Their first excursion was to South Beach Marina in Newport, Oregon. There they sailed their new baby up the bay, getting used to the boat. Now keep in mind this was in December, and although Jannie loved boats too, camping in the cold was not her idea of a fun time. Actually being in the coastal winds was only better than being in the winds with pelting rain. Fortunately the weather that day was calm, and though the night was cold, they just buttoned up the hatch and snuggled in their sleeping bag. (Truthfully I doubt either got much sleep since the lapping of the water on the boat and the clanging of the sail lines going down the middle of the mast, and the halyards clanging on the mast kept Jannie awake, while Captain Craig's visions, sailing his majestic West Wight Potter, danced like visions of sailing dreams come true.) The next morning they pulled the boat out and went back to work in Corvallis. Yeah, they took their boat to the coast for an evening sail and drove it back to work the next day. There is a lot to be said about having a trailerable boat!!! (And according to Captain Craig, Jannie was being a great sport, camping with him on a cold December work night!)

The Beginning of Nautical Nonsense - Visiting the San Juan Islands, Washington

OK, so don't freak out and think this is just a romance blog. Yes, I'm going to talk about my soulmate, Craig, who has been a blessing to me for a little over 7 years now. But, this is really about our sailing experiences here on the west coast of the good ole USA.
OK, the truth is Craig is the sailor, I'm just the tag-along, country-bumpkin, hillbilly-hick wife, who thinks she has married her knight in shining armor....I mean Captain in shining Fiberglass. He's not just a Captain, he's also my IT support! Did I do good or what?
SO, just to get you all up to speed in the love-affair of the city boy and county girl and their sailing adventures here's how it all started............

CRAIG was divorced for about 2 months and feeling kinda resentful of women, pretty sure he'd never marry again and pretty sure all women were evil witches.
Jannie had been divorced for 5 years and wasted it all on the spawn of Satan, who was getting divorced when the time was right. (pretty sure now that the anti-Christ wannabe was feeding that line to many women).
Somehow (by the grace of God) Jannie got a job offer at a local global computer company (Hewlett Packard) as an administrative assistant to the division that Craig worked for.
March 9th she started her job, depressed and miserable and met the depressed and miserable divorced guy who a month later proposed marriage. (April 1st was their first date, an indicator I'm sure of the humor that would keep their marriage alive.) It was love at first site and neither one would have believed it if it hadn't actually happened to them. It still seems so hard to believe after 7 years they are still crazy in love, spending all day at the job together and all night sharing their home life (actually they work there too).
SO what does this have to do with Sailing?
WELL, Craig loves boats. And I mean all boats. If he were a rich man he would have one of every boat. No boat is a bad boat, no matter what it looks like or whether it floats, as long as it's a boat. We're talking pontoon boats, speed boats, fishing boats, row boats, boats in yards, boats half sunk, dinghy boats to yachats to freighters. (As you will see in coming blogs, even shipwrecked boats make him tremble with excitement and you would never believe his true dream boat!)
WHEN Craig met Jannie he had a little runabout boat, 16 feet of fun. It was a used boat that always ran and he spent the summer of his divorce healing in it. There were some pretty amazing adventures too, that summer, where the adrenalin rush from being chased by a bear along the Umpqua River sobered him up really fast to the death-defying jump over the boom of Green Peter Dam, which left him with a bloody lip and awe that his boat was still in one piece. (problem was how would he get back on the other side of the boom where the boats were supposed to be before daylight?...See Boom Jumping by Boat)
Because Craig could tell Jannie hadn't got to travel much while raising her daughters, and learning she loved water like he did, he wanted to take her somewhere special she had never been. When he asked her if she would like to go to the San Juan Islands for a weekend he had no idea how he was sealing their fate as sailing buddies for life.......