14 August 2009

In the beginning...

In the beginning, there was grad school. And the realization that sailing Lasers was really not going to be the way forward, at least as far as meeting fun people and having a good time goes.



A little research, and then there was BER 8739. I acquired this boat from Ted Ferrarone. Judging by his 505 trading activity over the past few years, I think it marks the beginning of his role as a "fleet enabler", providing liquidity to the 505 trading pool. I raced that boat actively in the summer of 2002, with Alex Mevay (fellow MIT Sailing alum, and future mini-Transat racer, to give an idea of the sort of company I keep), putting many miles on the Saturn in the New England / Canada area, and even hitting Florida twice for the mid-winters with unsuspecting friends as crew.

Grad school finally intervened, and the boat was stored in the bat cave for a few years whiel I graduated. When I moved back to Bermuda for some reason I decided to take that boat with me. Thanks to the help of a good friend, a little mis-communication, and the trade of a used Saturn to my brother-in-law for driving my boat to NJ, the boat arrived in Bermuda. It ended costing me more to ship the boat than to buy it, but at least it got its own container. Except for the mast. Which got run over by a forklift. And of course, was uninsured. That boat is still in my garage, with the deck half-stripped, and lots of new epoxy after the shroud tackle ripped out of the boat...

Not much happened in Bermuda with me and 505s, I was busy doing other things, but once I caught onto the idea of the 2009 worlds last year, I decided to by BER 8119 -- no more wooden foredeck, 'modern' bow launcher, etc. That was good until I ripped out 8119's shroud tackle as well. Turns out his boat had other problems as well, leaving me with two 505s in the yard.


Fast forward to March 2009. At this point I was crewless, my then crew having decided to move to New Zealand to learn how to make wine (can't blame him really...), and injured with a slipped disk, thanks to a Viper regatta in Miami.

So, will it all work out? Stay tuned...

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