Rain, sleet and snow

Many years ago on an Icy river

First snow/sleet/rain of the season today.  It's cold, wet and raw outside, perfect weather for sailing in the mind by reading a book, working on boat design, watching sailing vids or updating the blog.  This morning I watched this video:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER2Ksa8uHpA

It's an older entry from Dylan Winter on his Keep Turning Left sailing blog.  He really does lovely work making these pieces and I'm considering purchasing the DVD versions of them, even though I don't really buy such things, and can't really afford the luxury
In this piece he shows some of the older SHARPIES that are club raced in the area he is cruising in and states all of the positives of the type.  Coincidentally these are all the reasons that I am on about the current project, my 15 foot micro-cruising boat, which may be called the "CEDAR POND CRUISING SHARPIE" or the HUDSON RIVER MICRO-CRUISER,  we'll see
A funny thing about this Sharpie design idea is that a friend of mine mentioned the idea years ago, saying that he'd wanted to build one.  I didn't give it much consideration at the time since I was very intrigued by my deep keeled full displacement cruising yacht, but things have changed since then.

The idea of sailing a small boat that can be kept for cheap/free, and used in almost any body of water, well maybe not offshore, but then again, what I have easily available to me is a grand river that leads to the sea, but more importantly, is on it's own, a wonderful playground for a small adventuring boat that can be beached and make it's way up small tributaries and marshes, but with some accommodations for over night camping aboard in relative comfort.

I've been staring at Ruel Parker's book on sharpies "The Sharpie Book." The boat I want to build falls somewhere between and outside of the boats he describes in this book, but that is just as well as I seem to have such a hard time following another persons directions.  I think of it as the difference between following a path on land, which can be discerned by foot prints, tire tracks and such which will linger and can even tell you something about who and what came before, I prefer the sea going version of following others, for the wake closes up, fades away, moments after it has been made, leaving no sign that anybody has gone this way before, even if out on the horizon you can see the other ship, tiny, miniature in the distance, there is no real way of knowing that you are floating on the very same water that that ship was supported by, and in truth, it's highly likely that you are not.  This allows for a certain degree of freedom in the way one approaches his path, journey, ideas.  There is hardly a chance that my boat will be the very first of it's shape and size, but that isn't important.  What is important is that I am coming to it in a unique way, for what I bring to the moment is uniquely my own.

Great book on a great boat type