Boating Stuff

Thought maybe I should jot down some of my sailing adventures while I can still remember most of them.
After Carline and I took sailing lessons from the Red Cross, we decided to buy a boat. Well, really, we had the boat first. One of the contractors from work just happened to have this boat that he needed to get rid of. Anyway, we bought a
22' O'Day sailboat. The beginning of our new lives as sailors ARRGH! That would have been @ 1999 or so. We owned her for 4 years. During that time, we learned a whole lot more than the lessons had taught us. We had some great times with John & Kathleen; us in our boat and them in theirs. We would do day sails and overnighters. The boat never had an official name, although it was called Wet Ashes!
I learned about sailboat racing during those times also. We didn't race our boat much, but I did crew for other racers at the Sarasota Sailing Squadron in the Friday night races. I remember crewing with Kenny on Y-Knot, Dimitri on Splitter, and Chris on Wayward Son mostly. What great fun. Dimitri used to call me etu' Dave since I would sail on other boats at times. Those were the good-ol racing days.
The only big races I remember doing during those times was when I crewed on Endangered Species, a 43' Catamaran a couple times, most noteworthy was the race to Key West from Clearwater. What a Boat! But we got half way and ran out of wind. After bobbing around for several hours, we fired up the engines and headed for the party!
Then one day Calvin said that he needed to get rid of his Catalina 30! What a coincidence, I needed to buy a Catalina 30!