Hello Family, Friends and the rest of ya!

Its been a while since you've heard a story from me hasn't it? (For those of you who have never read one, you can catch up at

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/bobraym/ nice plug for the old website don't cha think Rayna?) No political call to arms either! So you're probably asking “SURELY having a child would spawn a story or two or three?” Well enough has happened over the past 18 months or so that I could have come up with a story I guess but they wouldn’t be the same. I haven't flipped a boat in cold water lately, no vacations out of the country; my adventures have been confined (for the most part) to changing diapers and an occasional outing with baby.

Enough funny, cute or heartwarming things have happened I’m sure, but the stories just wouldn't be in the same vein as stories of the past. No life threatening scrapes, no hijinks really. Since 9/11 and Duncan life has gotten a bit more serious I guess. There WAS that time Duncan took a diarrhea poopie while in the tub with Rayna. Now I couldn't very well write about that could I, she always reads these things. Her sense of humor has, how can I put it, altered since baby.

There have been those sudden middle of the day Doctor visits, fighting a toddler to take medicine, having him vomit on the drive into work/day care. There has been camping with Duncan, sailing on the dinghy with him, his first Titan practice...oh there have been "events" and stories waiting to be written I’m sure. I just couldn't "wring out" something that satisfied me and passed my editor.

So this one is really a 2 part-er. I hope you enjoy, Part 1 is called...

Chapter 1

Bigger IS Better? Or How We Got A New Boat

Duncan is nearly 18 months old now. He is a toddler and proof they have misnamed the Terrible Twos...it is really the Terrible Year and a Halfs! He is walking, talking, getting into everything. His first sail was near his first birthday while camping back in May and he was amazed, the wind was low. He just loved it. He was 1 month older on his second trip with more wind and by this time, he had had enough of sitting still. Well, that was all mama needed to nix any more of daddy sailing with baby.

Rayna’s sailing has been somewhat diminished of late (to say the least). Being pregnant then a new mother and afraid of water what do I expect? I keep trying to make it attractive (how about a sunset cruise dear?), we even go camping out of town without the baby and I still cannot get her out for any length of time. Now I love sailing but I love my wife and baby too. I want them with me. What can I do? If there is something you enjoy and your family enjoys it too, you’ll get to do it more often and with the people you love. Oh well, it was a good try, but the little boat just wasn’t doing it for Rayna.

So I ask a question that prompts the poor thing to give me an honest

answer...would a larger boat make it more likely for you to sail with me and sometimes bring Duncan? “Yes” was the reply. What...“yes?” Uh oh, you know what that means!

I have crewed on some other boats in regattas. I really enjoyed helming a larger boat and have been ready for one for a while. It doesn’t react as fast as my dinghy. I can feel things coming on a larger boat. One thing I remember was that most always there seemed to be enough Catalina 22s for a class of their own at the regattas. It is a boat I also knew was good for family cruising. As it turns out, not only is this boat probably the most widely produced sailboat ever (over 15,000 which means parts and other sailors are easy to find) but some good boats were in the "buy it now" affordable range. No waiting for 2-5 years to live THIS dream. No waiting for camping with the family on a boat...BUY IT NOW affordable!!

After researching and learning more, I find a boat from South Carolina on the internet that seems to fit the bill (the second one I check out) but at about the same time I read that the captain of the Catalina 22 Fleet lives 2 blocks away! He is such a HUGE help. RJ gives me advice and offers to look at any boat I find. In fact, he offers to keep his eyes open for what I want and invites me to the Fleet meeting. He is so nice and welcoming that I forget about the boat in South Carolina.

I’ve been looking now for over 2 months. Mostly dreaming but looking and researching anyways. I’m convinced that a Catalina 22 is the way to go and RJ will help me get there and knows other owners who can help me keep it going once I’m there (something the dealer who sold me the first boat did a HORRIBLE job at...and RJ isn’t selling me anything!). I just wish HE could find something.

Wait.

What about that boat in South Carolina? It was in the price range and in fact, it was in the buy it yesterday range! Did I tell RJ about it? No, no I don’t think so. So I forward the info I had, along with some questions and answers from an email to the owner about a month earlier. But surely this one had sold by now. Surely.

RJ looks at the everything and says this looks like a good boat to him. So I call the next day (Friday 9/26) and while it hasn’t sold, someone is driving in that day to pick it up sight unseen. They did take my number though...just in case, but as the morning wore on I got more and more bummed about missing a good deal. By lunch I was KICKING my own behind for not jumping. I had studied and studied, researched and researched and I should have been more confident that I could spot MY deal when I see it.

“Ring.”

“Ring.”

My cell phone went off while I was out at lunch. I pull it off my belt, look at the display and THEY are calling me!!! I nearly fumble the phone trying to answer it and learn that the man wasn’t on his way and couldn’t make it for a week. I tell her to give me 5 minutes and I’ll call back to tell her when I CAN make it. I give Rayna a call and before you know it, I’m packed up and off by 5 that evening.

I don’t arrive in Rock Hill, SC until 1AM their time but getting up and out was easy the next morning. I find my way from the hotel to the Goolsby’s (they are Carolina Panther fans but nice folks anyway!) and get to see the boat. Now the pictures looked a little better than real life. It really wasn’t bad but tiny little things couldn’t be picked up by the pictures. I get on the phone to RJ (waking up the poor guy) to find out if these “things” are anything of concern. He asks questions and I describe until we determine that the boat is in good shape as far as I can tell.

So it’s a deal! I have a new boat but now the adventure of preparing her for a 7 hour drive back to TN begins. It takes a while to get on the road and by 12 their time traffic is picking up. UT is playing SC that day in Knoxville.

I get about an hour outside Charlotte and soon learn that traffic to the game is not going to be the problem. The boat is HUGE. I have to go through a mountain construction zone alone towing something larger than my truck (which, by the way, I had never done before). At one point I have a semi on my left and a barrier on my right...and did I mention that the lane had gotten smaller due to construction!

Well, it only took one of those “dirty pants” episodes to convince me to drive like an idiot/ass. The next time I was squeezed I prepared for it and straddled the line. They could say what they wanted about my driving but I had room to do it. Straight-aways weren’t the problem, it was the dang curves up and down the mountain in those construction zones that scared the bejeezus out of me but I make it home, none worse for the wear with the boat and trailer intact. I even make it in time for the UT game on TV (Duncan says “booooball!”).

Rayna was impressed from the moment she saw the boat. “Wow! I didn’t know it would be that big” was the first thing out of her mouth. Well thanks but it isn’t all that big. 8 more feet of boat translates into, well, a place to cook, crap and sleep. The next day we meet RJ at the lake to rig the boat and put her on the water for the first time. It was PROBABLY too windy to be out for my first try and with the family.

We went anyway.

So we are sailing in somewhat heavy wind (with only 1 sail, I ain’t stupid!) while Rayna and Duncan stay below but she is NOT having fun. Duncan is about 17 months old now and is a handful, armful, a chore at times! He wants to crawl around but the boat is heeling and Rayna is chasing after him in the cabin. During this time I notice that one of the things RJ told me to make sure I don’t forget since it was CRITICAL to the boat was...er...forgotten.

Uh oh!!

I couldn’t panic; Rayna and Duncan were on the boat with me. I COULD NOT screw this up. I had to be calm and fix it and do it without alarming anyone. Luckily the boat is setup to take out alone (single-hand) so I tell Rayna I’m going to try it out and go forward for a bit.

I’ll spare you the details but I got it fixed and sweated bullets the entire episode. When I get back, Duncan has gone to sleep and Rayna is coaxed into joining me in the cockpit. She loves it. We snuggle in the wind and let Duncan lie in the forward berth. When he wakes she goes down to try to get him to sleep some more.

While that is going on I realize that the first emergency was neither the last nor the worst. What I had tried to prevent from happening on one side of the boat in the first episode had happened on the other side.

Honey, I have to go forward for just a bit. Stay there and I’ll be right back (note the calm demeanor belying the fear in his mind and heart reaching down to his very soul!).

I ease the sails; I get a ring for the shroud, put on my life jacket and lash the tiller. The wind has kicked up white caps at this point and the bow is bouncing. Not only will this make it very difficult to perform the work, it also made the situation more dangerous because the other shrouds were taking more stress than they should have. Folks, a shroud supporting the mast that comes loose is a good way of dismasting your boat and casting, for lack of a better term, a distinctively negative pall over the whole freaking affair.

After considerable bumbling and stumbling, and quite a few words that should not be repeated here nor heard by my son, I’m able to quietly get the shroud attached and all without Rayna even knowing what was up. When I get back Duncan sees and wants me. I convince Rayna to put on his life jacket and hand him up. For just a moment he is fascinated that he is with daddy up here and mama is down there.

And then it happens.

He realizes a new place.

A place he’s maybe never been before but at the very least a place he doesn’t remember. He quickly turns his head to the right as far as it will go, opens his mouth and begins this low, deep “ooooooooohhhhhhh” that doesn’t stop for a breath as he turns ever so slowly to the left. Slowly, slowly, never breathing always letting out that same sound, same tone, same volume until his little head will not turn any farther left.

He stops there, for just a moment, mouth still open and then turns up to me...and smiles.

So I feel pretty darn good about this. We have survived heavy air and 2 emergencies our first time out and as far as Rayna knew the worst had been baby had been a pain in the butt. I did pretty good this time, on a lot of counts. We both LOVE the boat and after the first couple of hours out, I realize I’m not doing too bad with handling her either. Yep, pretty darn good if you ask me.

Good enough for a regatta next week?

REGATTA?

Chapter 2

“Ramming speed!” or “TURN, TURN, TURN!!!!”

REGATTA?

I’ve only had the boat, what, a day and I agree to go to the Oktoberfest Regatta on Percy Priest the following weekend? Rayna says we can get a babysitter so she can come as well. Oh this is WAY TOO cool! Saturday comes and the wind is good enough for racing but there are more boats than Rayna felt comfortable with (32) and she can only work the winches (back work!). In other words she doesn’t have a great first regatta.

I get frustrated because one of my clutches keep slipping and my main sail drops about 2 inches every time it happens so I cannot flatten it out. Someone tells me to tie it off at the mast. I say to myself, yea, I’ll have to do that next time. Next time? I’m so into sailing and just being there that it doesn’t dawn on me to just do it now, why wait until next time?

Sunday comes and Rayna decides she’d rather be with the baby and it looks like I’ll have to drop out of the race. But there isn’t enough wind and the races are called. I finish 8th out of 8 boats. Well that’s not bad considering this is my second race at the helm (I raced my dinghy once) and second time sailing this boat! And “not bad” means I finished all races held; some folks don’t finish!

Well just because she likes the boat doesn’t mean you are sailing every

weekend mister. That’s OK at first but sure is hard when I am just getting to know the boat…her, excuse me! But another regatta is coming up (10/25 and 26) and Rayna says I can race. She won’t be coming out but I can and RJ gets me in touch with someone who can crew. So I get to sail, I get to sail!

During my “down time” I have cleaned her, named her “At Last”, numbered her, found a place for her to rest between sails. She came with a burgundy stripe and now has wonderfully BURGUNDY lettering. I’m a UT fan, I say that color is BURGUNDY and I have the swatch to prove it! But At Last is ready for her second regatta in style. Please pay no attention to the huge swath of bright red material used to repair the mainsail but it does make me easy to pick out at a distance! I would give ANYTHING to be put some Gingham on there! (Dennis Miller Moment-its that stuff that old southern women’s dresses are made out of, think Ma Kettle. You get it?)

I take At Last over on Thursday night to Hamilton Creek so she can spend a night near water. I leave work early on Friday to rig her and meet my crew Mike. Another Catalina owner John helps me get her in the water. Everyone is SO dang helpful. John hooked me up with the lettering and numbering and even made some shroud covers for me. Everyone I meet is just incredibly helpful. We get her in the water and tie her up to the dock for the night because…

Tomorrow we sail!

The Fall Equalizer Regatta is on Alabama weekend and I have not missed a Bama game in close to 20 years if not more. I have my radio so I wouldn’t entirely miss it. You might think that my biggest problem is that my crew is a Bama fan. As it turned out, that wasn’t our problem at all (he was gracious and I had to be a jerk I’m sure) but 20 mph gusts were the problem. Oh, and having 12 boats in our class racing and nearly 40 boats total racing just made things more…er…interesting to say the least.

We are killed the first race. Just killed. I had done some work to At Last during my “down time” in hopes that it would make sailing less stressful and faster. Well, I was in dead-dog-been-dead-a-long-time last place. But I was sailing and that was something I had not done for a few weeks.

I determined that the biggest problem was where we started. We are always the last over the start line (because I’ve just been following folks) so we have to do better. I’ll spare you the finer details of regatta starts but suffice it to say that there are a bunch of boats in a small area sailing back and forth, back and forth (you can see why Rayna got nervous!) During this time I am getting closer and closer to the start line, avoiding traffic. It is now 1 minute till our start and it appears that I am going to be in perfect position to be in the pack…for a change.

I am on a port tack meaning I am heading to the right of the wind and have to give way to anyone on a starboard tack or heading to the left of the wind. I tell you that because all of the sudden, off our starboard (right) I hear John…”TURN, TURN, TURN” followed by a VERY LOUD “BOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” that accompanied a horrible vibration ending in a shove of At Last.

We hit.

I had crossed his right of way as he was positioning for the start and not performing his usual traffic check. Why should he? He had right of way. As for me, I was just pretty darn excited to be there and a danger to anyone within 100, 150 feet!

It was quite a hit too. Echoed off the cliffs and around the lake for some distance. It was Mike’s first and my second “dirty pants” event (see part 1 of this story!) so we pealed away from the race. I signaled to the race committee that I was not racing this one and set the boat so that it would be easy for Mike to handle while I went forward to take a look. I was worried about what I had done to John’s boat but my first concern had to be my own sorry behind and Mike’s.

Sinking At Last on my second regatta would make for a shocking and memorable story I’m sure, one I KNOW I don’t want to write or explain to an insurance agent. So I go forward and see that At Last is fine (“merely a flesh wound” requiring me to learn about gelcoat) and I can now forget about my boat and worry about what I have done to one of the guys who has been so helpful and nice. Did I do something really bad to his boat cause I know I screwed his start? Am I going to be calling my insurance agent about what I’ve done?

I sail about 2 miles away from everyone while they are racing. Sort of a self imposed exile I guess. I think I was embarrassed. When I make it back it’s time for the third heat and I cannot see John. As it turns out, we are positioned to make a decent start, I think I see John ahead so we decide to race again. We don’t get too far past the start when, while trying to make a turn, the main sheets (the ropes for the sail I was in charge of) get all fouled and we are in trouble. This particular situation can cause the big main sail to lock up and the boat to have a “knock down.” For those of you who do not sail and have not read my earlier story about flipping my little boat in the cold, it is neither fun nor interesting! So I had about had enough.

I get us into the wind so the line will swing toward me and in short order I get the sheets going again and quickly confer with my crew about calling it a day. Needless to say he is in agreement and we head in. On the way we realize that John is nowhere to be seen but by the time we get to the dock he is there to help us tie up. We are concerned about him and his boat and he just laughs and says that it is no big deal but that he was afraid that WE were discouraged about it all.

I wasn’t but I was sure pissed at myself. Rayna, Duncan and my Mom join us for BBQ dinner at the club for a great few hours that night. I am exhausted and that dang UT/Bama game going so long doesn’t help anything either. I am sore when I go home and just cannot get moving in the morning. I race anyways on Sunday but I’m late getting there. John is SURE now I am fed up and taking my boat home!

The wind on Sunday is a bit lighter but the weather is HORRIBLE. Lots of fun for a regatta though! No I’m serious. It was foggy and the wind was kicking up spray off the lake, visibility was crap. Kinda feeds those Walter Mitty fantasies! It was getting colder and it was a blast!

We do much better Sunday. Mike is getting the hang of the headsail winch but his improvement is more than mine at the helm and main. We still come in last in both races but we are good enough to push the boat ahead of us at times…the same one that struck us the day before (Please note, I did take his right of way.)!

My goal has been to get better every regatta. I do not expect to win but I would like to stop making them wait to start the next race until I have managed to crawl over the finish line. My first regatta (in my dingy) I wasn’t able to finish due to a RAGING sunburn from where I was so happy-like-a-kid to be out there I forgot to put on block! My second regatta was my first with At Last and I was able to finish the race (an improvement).

The weather on Saturday ripped 3 sails. But it couldn’t be attributable to everything that happened. The last count I heard was 4 boats “swapped paint”, 2 had motor or motor mount damage and one had 2 shrouds come undone (remember my first time out!). And this was just the Catalina fleet. One that ripped her sail early on Saturday decided to drop out of the final day making us 11th out of 12. While I am not ready to go pro, at this rate I figure the other Catalina guys will have something to worry about sometime, ummmm, in the summer of 2005.

On second hand, everyone did kinda stay out of my way on that second day. Word gets around I guess. Sailors are no different from other folks, you CAN get a reputation.