My Boating History
My first memories of boating was as child my father bought a canoe. We'd paddle around lakes and creeks. When I was around 6 or 7 my dad bought a 1968 28' Owens cabin cruiser. I remember lots of work necessary to maintain the wooden boat. We spent most summer weekends for several years on the boat, first in the Delaware River, then Indian River near Georgetown, DE, and finally at the Northeast River and Chesapeake Bay. Around 1977 dad moved on to building a house and the boat got left to the wayside. During my teens, twenties, and thirties I saw only sporadic boating interludes. These included some canoe trips, ski outings on a friend's boat, fishing in Maine while in the service, and Hobie Cat sailing.
A few years ago dad started talking about getting a sail boat. He invited me to partner with him. However at the time I had a young family and my wife didn't seem overly interested. So I declined. He went on to get a boat and become an avid sailor. He repeatedly asked us out on the boat, but my wife still wasn't showing interest and we were quite busy with other things in our lives. Finally during the summer of 2006, I convinced Liz (my wife) to go out on the boat. It was incredible, Liz took to sailing like a fish to water, so to speak. She absolutely loved it. After that if my dad asked we were there. The fun was short lived however as dad had his boat for sale. At the end of the season he got an offer and just like that the boat was sold.
My wife wasn’t going to let that stand in her way, so we set off in search of our very own boat. We started looking in the 20 something foot range but quickly decided that we wanted something that we could spend a extended weekend on comfortably. The first contender we found was a C&C 30. She had everything we were looking for, inboard, wheel and roomy interior. Her price was a little higher than our budget, so we made an offer. They didn’t accept so we set off looking again. On a trip, to North Carolina we looked at a Catalina 30. After looking at several Catalina 30’s we really decided that was the boat for us.
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