Where do I start?

This is where I'm going to write about my love of boating....past, present, and future. I don't really know why i started this page. Maybe it's to get my ideas and my direction organized. Things always seem clearer when they are written down.

I would like to end up in a sailboat... cruising the Caribbean for a few years, in the near future. I will use this page to help me mark my progress towards this goal.

I've owned Jon boats, bass boats, ski boats, and a power cabin cruiser but I have never owned a sailboat before.

Right now I have a 16 1/2' Hydra sports bass boat with a 115 Mercury on it. It is small, easy to load and unload by myself,and it will haul butt. With me by myself, I can hit about 62 mph in it.

I also have a 28' Chaparral 278XL cabin cruiser. It sleeps 6, has a full galley, toilet and shower, hot water heater, and all the other goodies. I really like this boat but it gets expensive to fill up the 140 gallon fuel tank. the last time I filled it up gas was about $2.50 a gallon. That was about $350 a fill up. Gas at the marinas now is going about $3.00- $3.25 a gallon this year pushing a fill up to around $450. You might think that 140 gallons would last awhile , but it doesn't really. Don't get me wrong, at a typical cruising speed of 3000 rpms, it's turning a fairly quick 27 mph while it is burning about 8 gallons per hour. That comes out to about a little over 3 miles per gallon. That's the nautical equivalent of a Honda Accord for a boat of this size.

We carried the cruiser 300 miles down the Chattahoochee River and the inter coastal waterway to Panama City, Fl last year. I have a separate detailed blog for this trip with pictures. If you are interested, it is at http://downthehooch.blogspot.com

I like the power cruiser but the gas is expensive and to take an extended cruise of the islands for a couple of years, a person would have to be very well off financially. Unfortunately I'm not.

That is what got me started thinking about sailboats to begin with. I've read countless books, forums, and magazines on sailing and they have captured my imagination. I looked at a sailboat before I bought the cruiser. The guy selling the boat actually took me out on it for a few hours and it was great. It was an old fixxer upper and nothing really special but it was almost magical when he shut down the motor and lifted the sails and the boat began moving under the power of the wind alone. I have to tell you, I'm hooked. A sailboat is definitely in my future.