Introduction

 

 

 

This is my boat, “The Beast of Burden”, a Venture 21 built in 1971 by MacGregor Yachts.  I bought her in 1999 and sailed her for a year and a half before starting any projects.  I just wanted to sail the boat, not work on it, so I put off all projects until I had a chance to have some fun.

The Beast of Burden

Those first few sailing experiences were difficult.  With no experience or training, I fumbled around quite a bit.  Raising the mast was an obstacle.  The mast isn’t so heavy, but you can only raise it so far before you have to climb to the cabin top to walk it the rest of the way forward, which you can’t do while holding the mast.  Like most sailors, I’m still tinkering with various mast-raising schemes.  Keeping the boat at the yacht club, where she sits all rigged up and ready has minimized this problem.  Now I only have to raise the mast when I move the boat, but not for sailing at the club. 

 

One of our first sails taught us a lot about when to sail and when to stay home.  It was very windy, over 20 knots, and I foolishly thought that would make for great sailing.  We sailed under main alone for a while, then I got the bright idea of flying the genoa.  As I said, I was inexperienced and foolish.  We had the ride of our lives.  We hung on for dear life as the boat heeled severely and the tiller pulled like a mule.  At the time, I didn’t realize that letting go of the tiller would stop the boat, so I clung to it for dear life.  It was a white-knuckle experience I wouldn’t care to repeat.  I learned two lessons that day... no, three.  Don’t sail on very windy days; don’t overpower the boat with too much sail; and don’t drink red wine on a boat.  The wine went flying when the action started.  Some of the stains were still there when I painted the boat a year and a half later.

Shane

Sailing has given me not only a new pastime (obsession), but some great friends as well.  Oddly, I haven’t really connected with anyone at the yacht club, but I’ve made lots of friends over the Internet, through my favorite website, TrailorSailor.com.  Surprisingly, there were TSBBers (as we call ourselves) living right in my back yard.  TSBBers live all over the world, and many have never met another TSBBer face to face.  But I was lucky.  Just after buying my boat, I met Shane Wallace, the world’s worst speller and most enthusiastic sailor.  Shane has a talent for making people comfortable with him right away.  He’ll start to tease you and give you a hard time almost from the minute you meet him.  He sails a Neptune 24, a relatively heavy, solid, roomy boat that he launches and retrieves with much greater ease than I do with my light boat. 

Mark

Then there’s Mark, the brains of the bunch.  His IQ hovers around 175 or so.  It’s funny sometimes.  When you tell him about a project you’re working on, he can tell you all of the laws of physics that apply, and the physical properties of your materials and how many molecules you’ll lose to friction every time you use it.  Mark isn’t as active a TSBBer or sailor as the rest of us, because he’s too busy being a great dad.  He has a couple of teenage daughters, so when he’s not busy losing sleep, he’s busy with the kids.  He sails a Venture 17, a smaller version of my boat, a bit of a squeeze for a family of four.  He sails in Lake Charles and is a member of the Lake Charles Yacht Club.  This is actually not as crazy as it sounds, for someone who lives in Lafayette, 60 miles away.  Lake Charles is a small body of water, well suited for Ventures, and there’s plenty to do there.

 

John

 

Then there’s John, who sails a MacGregor 26 (see a trend here?  Everybody except Shane sails a Mac.)  John’s boat is the largest and most maligned of the bunch.  Despite this, I’ve seen people offer to buy his boat when he was launching.  John is our commuter.  He lives in Houma and has to travel a bit to sail in our waters. He, like the others, works in the oilfield.  I’m the only member of the Louisiana TSBB Chapter who has a respectable job.

 

I sail in Vermilion Bay, LA.  It’s a shallow, protected bay with brackish waters.  The Louisiana Coast has no cities, due to the marshy terrain, and Vermilion Bay is no different.  There’s only one village on the whole bay.  Most of the structures there are weekend camps, so there’s little permanent population.  This can be a good thing, because it means that water traffic is light compared to the sailing grounds of some of the other TSBBers, so we often feel like we have the whole bay to ourselves, but it also means that there are no sailing destinations.  We always launch and sail around, then return to our starting point.  I admit, it gets a bit monotonous. 

 

My club has a regular racing season, but I don’t race my own boat.  I tried it a few times and decided I’d have more fun, and learn more, as a crewmember under an experienced captain.  I crew on a Tartan 31, a fine boat, with Skipper Ed Williams, who is very patient.  He got his patience as a Sea Scout Leader.  Janice comes along and has a lot more fun on the 31 footer than she does on our 21 footer.