Deb and I decided to find a hobby that we could do together as the kids grew up. A co-worker had bought a 22ft Sailboat and invited us out on a calm day where we just motored. That started our search for our boat and our first time to sail on a vessel was at the Sea Trial of our 30ft Laguna Sloop. We met some of the best people in the world including a couple that had lived aboard a 41ft Morgan Out Island and cruised for over five years in the Caribbean. Add to that the lifelong friends that all came together as a boating community. We spent every weekend together.
We fell in love with our boating lifestyle and spent every weekend at the lake near Dallas, TX where we kept our boat. After two years we decided some day we would buy a bigger boat and live aboard and cruise in some fashion or another. The first step was to sell the house which we did in 2009. We moved to an apartment within a few miles of where we kept the boat in Lewisville, TX. We signed an 18-month lease and about a year into it we started traveling to the Texas coast to look for “that next boat.” We would make the trip about one weekend every couple of months and never found something that met what we wanted AND fit into our budget.
My job was flexible, and Deb was right about keeping us focused on our long-term goal, and I recall her saying “If we are not taking steps toward our goal than we are going backward.”. We started to look for places to live rather than boats on those monthly trips and soon found a place to keep our boat as well as a place to move. We settled on Kemah, TX and love this town and surrounding area.
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| 30 Foot Laguna – “The Dog House.” |
We packed and shipped the 30′ Laguna here and enjoyed a few sails on Galveston Bay and were finally sailing on “bigger water” though still hadn’t sailed in the ocean yet on our boat.
Things settled down, and we got into the swing of daily life and then the urge to find that “Bigger Boat” started to hit again. Spending time many nights a week sitting side by side with Deb, each on our laptop, engaging in what we call “Boat Porn.” That is what we call the process of browsing Yachtworld.com.
Then we found it. A Gulfstar which is one of the boats we knew we liked and agreed on. And as a Bonus, the seller was willing to trade for a smaller boat increasing our buying power. We contacted him and made the trip to Panama City, Fl. We liked it. A Lot. We arranged a survey and sea trial and worked out the details of the trade.
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| “Last Affair” near Pensacola FL |
Then the fun began. We made all arrangements for the Laguna to be shipped to Florida and started to plan the route we would sail our new boat home. So like our introduction to sailing, our first ocean sail was to cut across the corner of the Gulf of Mexico on our way from Florida to Texas.
We have sailed her from Florida to Texas, down the Texas coast to Corpus Christie and back to the Houston Area. She now sits in her berth in Kemah TX. She has had a complete refit and is a gorgeous, comfortable sailing boat and live aboard. We lived aboard and sailed her for about 18 months and then found our original dream boat, the Formosa.
If you are interested in S/V Last Affair, she is for sale and would make a great live aboard, cruiser or weekend get away.
The Dream now continues on our Bill Garden designed 51′ Formosa Cutter Rigged Ketch. She is beautiful, her lines and the curve of her hull tingle a wanderlust spirit in both Deb and I. She is well equipped and perfectly capable of sailing safely around the world. She has a heavy displacement for a very sea kindly motion and has all of the space, room, and things that we believe we want in a cruising boat. The work begins again, her refit will take quite some time (years), but we are going to enjoy her during the process.
We are now on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and will continue to work our way slowly along the coastline for years to come.
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| S/V Dream Chaser – 51 ft Formosa |