Sailing Resume
We’ll keep this short, because we’re somewhat private folks (yes, private folks with a blog, I get the irony)… intention of this blog is not to advertise our every move but to try to share some of our sailing specific experiences in the hopes of helping others out there who might be researching products, contemplating a Gulf 32 or another boat of that era, or just interested in how it is to sail out of Bellingham, Washington as a commuter boater.
That said, we’re Brigid and Bass, we live in Idaho and sail a Nimble 20 named Turnstone on Redfish Lake outside Stanley, Idaho in the summers. We also, as you may have noticed, sail a Gulf 32 named Boundary out of Squallicum Marina in Bellingham.
Our sailing resume is somewhat light still. We both dabbled in Lasers / Sunfish growing up, and Bass was very young crew (i.e. more of the “keep him from falling in the water” than “let him stand watches” kind of crew) on a 43′ Tanton cat ketch growing up. Living in Idaho sailing wasn’t a big focus, but we managed to fall into a Hobie 16 that we sailed for quite a few years on Redfish and other nearby lakes and reservoirs (Alturas and Pettit Lakes in the Stanley Basin, Magic Reservoir in Blaine County).
A chance day sail with friends who live in Bellingham on their Pacific Seacraft 25 made something in Bass’ head snap and it was time for a bigger boat (I know, I know). One or two abortive missions later (we still don’t really discuss a certain Compac 19 in Portland, OR) we were proud owners of Turnstone (http://sailing.pictureofnectar.com/hello-world). We keep her on Redfish Lake and sail her as much as possible in the somewhat short Idaho summers, but a true cabin for the colder days – combined with an outboard for the glassier days – has extended our sailing season over the Hobie quite a bit.
With some creative accounting and modest boasting we parlayed our Nimble 20 experience into a charter trip to the British Virgin Islands, spending 7 days on a Beneateau 343 after getting cleared by one of the Sunsail’s checkout captains (http://sailing.pictureofnectar.com/british-virgin-islands-charter).
A big project for Bass’ consulting company (Greyhound Design – http://www.greyhounddesign.com) allowed a second charter that year, this time on a Baba 30 in the San Juan Islands for 10 days (http://sailing.pictureofnectar.com/another-err-adventure-coming-soon-to-a-blog-near-you).
With another BVI charter under our belts on a Jeanneau 36i, in 2015 we took a bigger leap and chartered for 10 days in French Polynesia (http://sailing.pictureofnectar.com/french-polynesia-bora-bora-and-more) on a Jeanneau 44i (only monohull they had!).
Not surprisingly, all that chartering lead us to conclude that a) we really like exploring by sailboat and b) we can’t afford to keep chartering all the time. Hence Boundary into our lives and our new commuter boater lifestyle in Bellingham.