Enjoy Life Now Before It's Too Late

If you are going to do something, do it now. Tomorrow is too late.
                                                                                 ~Pete Goss



I think awhile ago I mentioned that Mr. Cottage and I use to sail.  We had started out camping with a tent, then moved to a pop-up camper.  But it was getting harder and harder to get into some of our State Parks; and the next thing I knew, we were looking at sailboats.  We seriously bought our first sailboat before I ever went sailing.  A good friend of ours asked us to join them for a weekend of sailing in Harbor Springs, Michigan.  It was late September and the next thing I knew we were sailing on Little Traverse Bay with strong winds and snowflakes and I loved it! 

Below is a young and skinny me, with young Mr. Cottage and our youngest son, Christopher (who was born after we had been sailing awhile).

We only had two kids at the time and we decided to start out with a 26 foot Pearson.  Supposedly, you shouldn't change the name of a boat, but Grebe?  This really was an impulse decision, so we renamed our boat Sudden Fancy.  We had large stencils made and I ended up painting the name onto our boat.  IF I find a photo of it, I'll be sure to share it with you...

If you've ever been in boating, then you know there's much to learn, in addition to the new terminology.  Galley (kitchen), the head (bathroom), Starboard (right), Port (left), Beam (width of the boat), and so much more.  It was such a different lifestyle and we loved it.  We kept it in Holland, Michigan at a marina that had a play area and pool so the kids would have things to do...
 

Yes, that's Mr. Cottage with the longest his hair ever was! 

Then somewhere along the way, our youngest son, Christopher was born and low and behold, we moved up to a 30 foot sailboat.  If you're not familiar with boats, it's not just 4 feet longer, but the beam is also much wider; so there's considerably more room onboard.  This was a Bahama Islander and we had bought it new.  We even got a gate and made a safe place for Chris when we were out sailing.  We kept him in the quarter berth...

I'm not sure who took this, but the photo below shows us sailing in our new boat...

One thing we did a lot of was cruising in Lake Michigan...

I'll share more of this tomorrow with you.  In the meantime, we're on a mini-vacation because our oldest son, wife and grandkids are visiting us this week from Texas and I'm going to be glued to our grandkids.