Madman with a Boat

  When I bought my little O'Day 25 I bought it for two reasons: I wanted to work on a boat, and I wanted to go places.
  I think every sailor starts out dreaming, not of helming for hours on end, or huddling below during a thunderstorm (both things I've rather come to enjoy), but they imagine all the wonderful places they could go, things they could do and sights to see. I think it's the glimmering hint of beautiful beaches and bikini'd women that convinces a man to lay down his hard earned money for something as impractical as a boat.
  Up till now, my boat, Cassandra, has gotten very little day-to-day use. I'll splurge and take a week or two trip, and then maybe go out only two or three more times for the year on day sails. Part of the trouble is how far away my boat is from where I live. Wind is free, but the gas to drive an hour in an '85 Pontiac getting 16mpg is prohibitively expensive.
  The other issue is simply this: You don't go anywhere on a day sail. You spend 15 minutes prepping the boat, ten motoring out into the lake, ten hoisting and trimming sails, you sail around for an hour or two, then spend another half hour or more getting the boat put back in it's slip and packed away. Somehow having a destination, someplace to get out, to explore, a new view to wake up to that makes the work worthwhile.
  This is the time of year when dreams come. This time of year, when the store is empty and I have hours upon hours to imagine those far off beaches, making repairs anchored in crystal clear water. I imagine exploring little creeks and inlets up and down the East coast in my little dinghy, Hope (yet to be finished). And so I set myself to thinking. "Why haven't I done it yet; what's stopping me?" In the summer I don't go off for long because I 'need' to work at the store and make money. In winter I work at Syracuse Stage. What's stopping me? New jobs can be found, I have no significant other, I have a boat that sails and is a pleasant home for me. So, what's stopping me? I've decided that I'm really the only thing standing in my way. I have some financial obligations I have to fulfill, but if I can take care of that, all that is left is to screw my courage to the sticking place and go.
  And so I'm announcing my plan. It is my hope that come September 2013 I will cast off and sail down the East coast making my way for the Keys and Bahamas. I don't know how far I may get, or will even want to go. It's been a dream of mine to explore the Outer Banks ever since my family went to Ocracoke and saw the Blackbeard museum. I want to revisit the keys, and to sail a bit of the Texas coast. I want to see Norman's Key in the Bahamas. But most of all I want to go someplace,  I don't much care where.
I'm a madman with a boat, and I want to see what's out there.
 -Brian