and she came from the mid west cultural elite.
It did not take long before boats came into out our lives together.
We started out small with a little 16" day sailor.
We sailed this little boat in Indiana, New York, Maryland, Louisiana and all over Texas.
We then decided to go big time and buy another boat. One so big it would no longer fit into our garage.
A '79 J24 called "OUTRAGEOUS". We raced this boat out of the Cape Royal Yacht Club. We did pretty good for a couple with little money. Unbeknown to us we acquired the reputation of sailing in almost any weather conditions. The J24 was a very capable boat. We even sailed her in the Gulf of Mexico in 8' seas. We got our first lessons in blister repair, overnight cruising, and why they call sailing to Windward "beating".
The boat only weighed 1.5 tons and we kept her in dry storage. This meant launching each time with a jib crane. We got quite good at it, so much so that it became routine. Once we launcher her and had her sitting in the water before we notice someone had stolen the little kicker outboard motor off the stern. Marina rules prohibited sailing in the marina so we turned right around and put her back on the trailer. The dog was very confused.
We will skip ahead to our next boat. We were beginning to understand that these sailboats may be becoming a big part of out lives so we started looking for a more comfortable boat. We started looking for boats and first met our boat broker (for life) Dave Jackson. He spent a great deal of time learning what made us tic and what might work for us. Turns out picking the right broker can have a lot to do with building the dream. We looked at a lot of boats and most would be a stretch for us to afford. But then he showed us a little 84' Catalina 30 named "Seaduction". For Tamera it was love at first sight. I had to admit she was right. While I had my sights set on the J35 or the Morgan 38 the J35 was not going to be that practical or comfortable and the Morgan was so for out of our financial reach the Catalina made a lot of sense for us. Dave was already drawing up the papers before we'd asked. We sailed this boat from Texas to Louisiana.
The picture above is where she is in the ship yard about to get some blister and hull repair that took 3 mouths to complete. There is no fast way to repair a blistering hull the right way.
So we were pretty happy and content. At this time we had 4 boats.
The 16' day sailor
A 15" snipe I had picked up after racing with the owner.
The J24 and
The Catalina 30.
We knew we had to get decrease the number of bought that owned us. We decide to keep the Catalina and the 16' day sailor. The rest were sold.
At the same time we were preparing to move to England and our investigation lead us to understand that owning a sailboat in England is a rich man's game and one we would not be able to afford, so reluctantly we put the Catalina up for sale and planned on keeping the little 16' day sailor. Well as things work out 2 day before the container is due to arrive at our house to load our stuff for England, I get an offer to work in Houston TX. We accepted the offer and the next day Dave Jackson called us to say he'd gotten an offer on the Catalina. Bugger. the broker contract says I cannot refuse a reasonable offer without handing over the 10% commission out of my pocket. Dave felt terrible about this but his bosses were not as sympathetic. I countered the offer with a full price or no deal and the buyer took the full price deal. We had lost our beloved "Seaduction". The buyer was getting a great little sail boat.
So for a couple of years we made do with the day sailor but the big time sailing bug would not leave s alone. We have made the mistake of chartering a sail boat in the BVI and gotten seriously infected with the Caribbean Sailing Bug (this particular bug was resistant to common sense).
We ran into Dave Jackson again at the boat show we wanted another Catalina 30. We had been kicking the tires on boats but due to the roaring economy, even the used boats were seriously over priced. Dave showed us the Catalina 32 an we liked it. Dave said he had one more thing to show us because I was not really excited about buying a new boat. They seemed to be a terrible investment.
Dave showed us the Catalina 380. It was not that much more and we reasoned it would be the last bought we ever bought (remember we were both seriously infected). The only time a new boat would make sense is if you were going to own it for a very long time and a virulent sailing disease was coursing through your brain. In no time at all we were the proud new owners of a brand new Catalina 380 named "Joli Bateaux" and a serious amount of debt. But that boat was amazing. This was the last boat we would ever own. We would live on it and sail everywhere. Strange how life had other plans.
We had this boat for 10 year. We had paid for her in full. We had entertained friends and spent weeks living aboard. We had trained our dogs to be good sailors and they were at home on the boat as they were anywhere else and judging by their enthusiasm preferred the boat to any other location. Those dogs were allot like us. 
In 2008 Hurricane Ike took allot of things and one of them was our precious "Joli Bateaux".
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