FINALLY!

Not much to say about this moment except that I’ve been dreaming about it for a year now and it’s finally happened.

I’m adding some text to make this more searchable, but the fun is my giddiness in the video.  I bought the Pygmy Coho kayak with the pontoons (ammas?) in Campbell River, BC, one day because I found it while I was in Victoria looking for a desk on Craigslist.  I took $1500 out in cash and jumped in a rental car (which they upgraded to an SUV for free, thank GOD, because I have no clue how I would have put all that stuff on top of a Neon) and drove 3 hours, just to see if I wanted the thing.  I handed the guy $1300 and took it home.

After using it as a kayak for a while, I sailed the rig it came with and decided it was mediocre at best.  I wanted a REAL sailing rig, with a jib, cable stays and a BEAUTIFUL WOMAN (You noticed her conspicuous absence in the video).  The necessary condition for BW is to have places for both of us to sit, so rather than wasting my efforts looking for BW, I installed benches.  I expect BW to appear shortly :D.

Long story short, I got a free sail, boarded with a shipwright for a few days, learnt to sail, learnt about rigs, learnt about “boat dollars” and learnt about the sailing bug.  Now I’m out of boat dollars, but I’ve got the bug and, fortunately, a sailboat (if you can call it that) as well!

If you want to know more about the boat, see this post about how I rigged it.  Incidentally, if you get into sailing, you’ll run into all kinds of people with extra gear to trade, sell or give away.  Everybody is friendly because they are all doing what they want to be doing :).