At 15 I went to Brittany France with my family and immediately signed up at the Centre Nautique de Cap Coz. Every day was spent sailing and learning about boats and sailing. Then, racing and racing and racing. Brittany is known for it's high winds and tempests that would come in off the North Atlantic. It was a blast. I found this YouTube that shows a little of what it was like. Bill was sailing 420s first then 470 (in Video) then 485s and 505s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDToL593cmU

At the age of nine I was finally old enough to go to camp on Lake Winnipesauke in New Hampshire. This camp had sailing and that's why I was going. The first day of camp they determined what kind of swimmer you were and put you in groups such as the Minnows, the Sunfish, the Sharks etc. I had learned to swim in Vermont in the little brook in Dorset Hollow. We would spend the summer building up a dam so the water would be deep enough to "swim" in (maybe 3 feet).

I can remember it was a warm sunny day and we all sat on the edge of the dock with their feet in the water waiting for our turn to swim from the dock out to the float and back. None of us knew each other much, I sat next to a guy named Dan who was from the same town in Vermont. We were all very excited and most of the conversation ranged from what group we thought we would be in to what group we thought the current swimmer would be in.

It was finally my turn and I jumped right in the water. Nothing happened! I remember quite clearly what it look like with all the feet dangling in the water and the rays of sunlight that created little shafts from the wavelets above. I was not surprised more afraid. I just didn't understand why it wasn't swimming. Shortly someone pulled me out and asked me "Don't you have a swim?" In retrospect, I think that was a redundant question! Well, the worst thing was that if I couldn't swim I couldn't sail.

So every morning before everybody else got up I would creep out of the cabin when it heard Mr. Orr walk through camp whistling. He and anybody who is interested in an early morning dip would walk down to some little cove and swim out to a flat rock that was barely submerged a couple hundred feet offshore. Mr. Orr said that when I could swim to the flat rock I could sail. I can't remember how me days it took me, and I do know that I was motivated.

It wasn't long before I was out sailing on Lake Winnipesaukee. I don't remember many specifics. I think we sailed mostly in wooden Caravel's. I do remember that it was the only thing I wanted to do. And I do remember the feeling of the wind in my face, and the excitement of the site of a gust riling up the water.

Since I was a little boy I've dreamed of going to sea. Not just going to sea, but going to sea on a sailboat. It's not clear to me how the dream started, having grown up landlocked in Vermont and Washington, DC. My father didn't sail and my mother had told stories of sailing a Cat Boat on Long Island Sound. Yet I wasn't interested in a Cat Boat and I wasn't interested in Long Island Sound. I dreamt of the big ocean swells that I felt when my sister took me out beyond the crashing waves in Rhode Island. But that's another story... At age nine I went to Camp Kabayen and learned to sail. At age 13 or 14 my family went to Brittany France and I sailed for the first time on the ocean. The next year I started racing 485s in the Bay of Concorneau. And there is a story there too...

After two summers of racing in Brittany France, and a summer sailing in Freeport Maine I went off to college in landlocked Tennessee. After college a job in Vermont, then a business, then marriage and kids, then single-parenting...

The drift of life had caught me up. Of course, I'd taken my family on bareboat vacations, I helped a friend sail a boat from North Carolina to Florida, and I kept reading Chapman's, the occasional sailing magazine, and the occasional book on some sailor's adventures. But basically, I had given up on the dream. I'd written it off as a childhood fantasy. The dream was forsakened.