Kaptain Kyle's blog

Last year, when the 'itch' to build our sailboat reappeared, I recalled using the internet in high school looking for canoe plans and finding some Cajun boat plans that were easy to make, cheap, and sturdier than canoes. They were vetoed of course by "that mom," the one that tried too hard to make life one big reality check. She was actually awesome, but at the moment I was pretty peeved. 

As I recalled that chapter of my youth, I wondered if you could find more boat plans online in 2010 then you could in 1999 or 2000. And I was inundated with a world I hadn't had access to in the fledgling years of the world wide web's mass access! I was so inundated in fact that I wanted to instantly build at least two dozen boats... there were classic sloops that caught the eye and seared images of romantic windy evenings off the Maine coast (2000 miles from where I live) to the off-eye beauty of some of Bolger and Michalak's boxy boats; not beauties but oddly inspiring for their functionality. 

There was a relatively light fog on a backdrop of dreary skies that made the Pacific appear relatively threatening to a person who had only left the harbor in pristine occasions before. The ship we were on was dwarfed by the container vessels coming in and out of Long Beach Harbor as we approached the breakwater.

Suddenly, the Tole Mour passed the rock structure that marked the edge of the harbor and the calm gave way to large swells. Our school group coordinator for this excursion had warned us to eat only toast and coffee for breakfast; anything more would result in seasickness. I had listened, and though I had been out to sea on a myriad of different sized vessels- all under 80' LOA- got seasick anyway. A great start to a 10 day, open sea cruise on the three masted Tops'l schooner where I was supposed to be a psuedo-counselor.