Brian and Kim, the new owners of S/V Smidge

I've head it said that two of the happiest days of your life are the day you buy your boat and the day you sell it. I don't agree. Selling a boat that has brought you so much pleasure is not an easy thing to do, but knowing that the new owners are going to love it as much as you do helps.

Brian tells me that he and Kim had looked at about 50 boats before they made an offer to purchase Smidge. Additionally, Kim and Brian were the first people to look at Smidge shortly after we put her on the market, so no one ever looked at Smidge and rejected her. She's a wonderful boat and her smooth sale to good people confirms that.

A condition of the sale was that the name Smidge will not go with her. All of our boats have been named Smidge and that name recognition has helped us connect with old and new friends. Smidge's new name will be Nara, after a favorite harbor in Australia where Kim and Brian learned to sail. Her new home will be Annapolis Landing Marina. All you Chesapeake folks, please welcome Kim and Brian to the sailing community.

As for Maury and me, keep an eye out for the new Smidge. This time it will be M/V and not S/V Smidge.

I never thought we would go to the dark side and get a powerboat. Sailing is in our blood and any other kind of vessel seemed like a weak excuse for a boat, but I think a powerboat is in our future, and OPB's (other people's boats) and charter boats will have to satisfy our appetite for cruising sailboats. Of course, we still have our Lightening and as long as we can get under the boom and hike-out in a strong wind, you may still see us on the racecourse.

Roger Johansson of Free State Yachts at the Annapolis Sailboat Show

To a non-sailor, it seems like we're always doing maintenance work on Smidge, but Maury has a good explanation for this. He says, "If you take your house, turn it on its side, shake it , douse it with saltwater and add a heavy dose of UV rays, something is going to break, corrode or wear out." We have not had any major problems with Smidge, or at least nothing we couldn't handle, but many times we could handle it because we called Roger Johansson of Free State Yachts. We've called and emailed him from remote places and he always took the time to speak with us and give us advice. If he wasn't there, Liz, who runs the office, made sure he received our message and called us back.

Free State also hosts a party after the boat show that gives us a chance to reconnect with other HR owners and speak to HR wannabes. Many thanks to Roger and Liz. With your help we kept Smidge in top cruising condition and enjoyed our time at sea.

Bonnie and John Albertine at the Annapolis Sailboat Show

Finally after many years of going to the Annapolis Boat Show and looking at a zillion boats, Maury decided on a Hallberg-Rassy. HR’s are built in Sweden and in 2002 a favorable exchange rate made the boat as affordable as less expensive boats made in the US. We placed an order. Our salesperson and guide through all of this was John Albertine who at that time was with Free State Yachts. We knew a lot about sailing, but we didn’t know very much about engines, generators, electrical systems, radar, chart plotters, water-makers – all the things that make a simple sail boat a cruising boat. John, a very experienced sailor, guided us through all of this and we are pleased with all the choices we made. We couldn’t have done it without him. In March of 2004, we took possession of big Smidge.

Maury and I have been sailing together since we started dating in the early 1970's. In fact, I doubt that he would have married me unless I sailed. Maury had not sailed until he moved to Toledo, Ohio with Owen-Corning Fiberglass, where he met some boat owners who needed crew for PERF races in Lake Erie. He loved the sport and saw that the really good big boat racers had learned to race in small one-design boats where you test your skills against boats just like yours and get immediate feedback each time you move. I came into the picture at about that time. He bought an Interlake, a one-design boat that was popular in the Mid-West, and we began to sail together, but I was left on shore when he could find better crew. That didn't sit well, so I flew out to Martha's Vineyard and took an intensive week-long sailing course at a Steve Colgate Sailing School. That's when things started to get serious in our relationship and in our sailing.

Maury intended to go back to big boats once he acquired some good racing skills in small boats, but we loved the small boat racing world and the camaraderie of the people in it. We were soon racing every Wednesday and Thursday evenings and going to a regatta every weekend. Boat handling and racing tactics became our pillow talk and as the years went on, the racing became a family sport and our children became part of the racing community.

In 1985, we moved to the East Coast and switched from Interlakes to Thistles that we sailed at Lake Hopatcong in New Jersey. We finally settled on racing Lightnings, mostly in Wednesday night club races on the Delaware River in Riverton, NJ, but the thought of getting a cruising boat that we could also race was never far from our minds.

Racing in Elizabeth Harbor, Bahamas - 2008

This year, we're going to the sailboat show and the powerboat show in Annapolis. It will be our first powerboat show as we start to think about the next step. We bought Smidge, our Hallberg-Rassy 43, in 2004 so we could go ocean sailing and we've done that. We didn't do a world circumnavigation, but we've travelled almost an equal number of miles. There are still places we would like to see by boat, but perhaps it will be by charter boat and not on our own boat.

We got a late start in this cruising game. We were older when we got married and older when we had children and now we are older. Long passages with just the two of us are not appealing and it seems foolish to maintain an ocean going boat that won't be going in the ocean. So we are looking for a boat for the Chesapeake and this time it may be a powerboat that will take us to shallower water and under bridges where Smidge could not go.

Smidge has been a perfect boat for us. She is comfortable to live in and I've always felt safe in her even under challenging conditions. Additionally, HR's have a great reputation and are respected around the world. Everywhere we went, people often told us that an HR was their dream boat. We are grateful that we have had a chance to own a dream boat and to actually live the dream.