Haven't been cruising the forum as much these days, great thread! My first love was boats too, Gramps started taking me out on his cabin cruiser when I was five, didn't get my first bike ride until I was 8. Took a family trip from Okinawa to Japan and back on a ship that same year, and rode a ship back to the States by way of Korea and Japan, when my dad was transferred. Skirted the edge of a typhoon on that trip, 25-30 ft waves were pretty exciting for a kid. Dad bought a cabin cruiser we used on the SF Bay before moving to Sacramento. After graduating HS, went to the California Maritime Academy where I learned the basics of sailing. While I was there, I met the only "famous" person in my life, Mark Rudiger. He left the academy after the first year and pursued his own sailing career, winning a Transpac race or two, as well as being the winning navigator on a couple famous ocean races. Mark loved motorcycles too, he had a cafe'd 68 Suzuki T-250 at the time (72), first bike I saw with a fiberglass seat and tank set. We rode around Vallejo a bit, he really liked my GT380, so I traded it for his Venture catamaran, quickly fell in love with multihulls, and he taught me a lot more about sailing. But that was all at 38n, I live just up the road from 45 now, my neighbor just got a boat, so I helped him refit, and we've been doing some sailing on the Columbia.
These were in November, we had a spate of unusually beautiful weather between Oct and Jan, then got snow in Feb. That's me on the tiller, my neighbor Jay in front. Great guy to have along on a camping trip, he's been a chef for a long time. Somewhere I've got pics of a trip we took with our friend Alan, spent a week cruising the San Juans on a Jenneau 36, I'll put them up when I find them. Lots of beautiful hidden spots up here in the PNW.
