Howdy Folks,
Since there's this handy "Introduce Yourself" section of the forums, figured I'd... well, introduce myself. The short version? I'm the noobest sailing noob who ever noobed.
My wife (30) and I (31) live outside of Portland, Maine. Up until a week ago I had never so much as set foot on a sailboat-not for lack of interest, though, and I finally decided the hell with it and signed us up for a weekend of sailing lessons (the ASA 101 Basic Keelboat class). And we had a blast. Duh.
So now we're in that harrowing purgatory of wanting to buy our first boat but trying to stumble our way through the indecision-paralysis caused by our total lack of all knowledge whatsoever. In the last three days I've read John Vigor's Twenty Small Sailboats to Take You Anywhere (mostly so I could get a quick idea of just "Here are some boats, and here are some things about them, and maybe those are things you will want to consider when looking for your own boat"-we have no delusions that we'll be cruising any further than Bar Harbor at any point in the next few years, let alone, say, Fiji) and I've started on Don Casey's Complete Illustrated Sailboat Maintenance Manual (namely the first section, on inspecting aging sailboats). It still feels like the blind leading himself, though, but hopefully it'll start coming together at some point. We also are hoping to line up another lesson next weekend (happy birthday to me!) to both focus on some tasks we're not really comfortable with yet (read: Docking without breaking everything) and to pick the instructor's brain on boat-shopping.
But in the interim, I figured I'd drop in here, say hi (Hi!), and if I don't get booed off the stage I might starting picking y'all's brains for sailboat purchase ideas as well. When you're as new as I am, every little bit helps, after all.
So, in summary:
Who: A Boring CPA named Walker
Age: 31
Experience: ASA 101 and literally nothing else
Where: Greater Portland / Casco Bay, Maine
Boat: TBD
Nervousness: High
Glad to be here (both the forums and the greater sailing community in general), and hopefully I won't prove too much of a nuissance.
Edit: And since I haven't yet tracked down which of the many subforums would be the most appropriate for a thread on soliciting boat purchase advice, if anyone wants to point me in that direction before I eventually stumble upon it myself, I'd be much obliged.
Since there's this handy "Introduce Yourself" section of the forums, figured I'd... well, introduce myself. The short version? I'm the noobest sailing noob who ever noobed.
My wife (30) and I (31) live outside of Portland, Maine. Up until a week ago I had never so much as set foot on a sailboat-not for lack of interest, though, and I finally decided the hell with it and signed us up for a weekend of sailing lessons (the ASA 101 Basic Keelboat class). And we had a blast. Duh.
So now we're in that harrowing purgatory of wanting to buy our first boat but trying to stumble our way through the indecision-paralysis caused by our total lack of all knowledge whatsoever. In the last three days I've read John Vigor's Twenty Small Sailboats to Take You Anywhere (mostly so I could get a quick idea of just "Here are some boats, and here are some things about them, and maybe those are things you will want to consider when looking for your own boat"-we have no delusions that we'll be cruising any further than Bar Harbor at any point in the next few years, let alone, say, Fiji) and I've started on Don Casey's Complete Illustrated Sailboat Maintenance Manual (namely the first section, on inspecting aging sailboats). It still feels like the blind leading himself, though, but hopefully it'll start coming together at some point. We also are hoping to line up another lesson next weekend (happy birthday to me!) to both focus on some tasks we're not really comfortable with yet (read: Docking without breaking everything) and to pick the instructor's brain on boat-shopping.
But in the interim, I figured I'd drop in here, say hi (Hi!), and if I don't get booed off the stage I might starting picking y'all's brains for sailboat purchase ideas as well. When you're as new as I am, every little bit helps, after all.
So, in summary:
Who: A Boring CPA named Walker
Age: 31
Experience: ASA 101 and literally nothing else
Where: Greater Portland / Casco Bay, Maine
Boat: TBD
Nervousness: High
Glad to be here (both the forums and the greater sailing community in general), and hopefully I won't prove too much of a nuissance.
Edit: And since I haven't yet tracked down which of the many subforums would be the most appropriate for a thread on soliciting boat purchase advice, if anyone wants to point me in that direction before I eventually stumble upon it myself, I'd be much obliged.