Blue Water Or Bust: First Log

This is my fourth attempt to start a blog. Not for lack of things to say, but for lack of organization and will to do. My other blogs never took off because I lacked a unifying theme. Some bloggers don't seem to need this, but I do. I can't stand the unstructured ramblings of most others, so I will try to keep mine to a minimal, and include only those thoughts which pertain to my stated blog goals.

Having said that, this blog is meant as a repository for daily information on my progress towards owning a sailing ship, becoming savvy in the skills of seamanship - navigation, maintenance, provisioning, skippering, and planning offshore adventures. In the short-term, my goals will not outlined here will not seem to line up with the overall picture, but it is part-and-parcel in my mind. I plan to differentiate my different adventures along the path to blue water cruising with different pages if possible so as to keep them topical as this is the style I prefer in a would that is inundated with, for lack of a better word, content.

I live in Minneapolis - actually in the city - and rent an apartment so my storage options and small boat ownership options are a little limited. However, I believe this is an essential first step - novel idea, huh?

So I have been deciding on whether to get a canoe and a sail-rig, which would have more applications and storage options here in Minnesota, a small sailboat (dinghy), or a catamaran (what I think is one of the coolest looking vessels ever).

I am leaning towards the canoe with a sail-rig for several reasons:

I can paddle it around, no problem.
Car-top-able.
I can always sell the canoe and keep the sails stored at a latter date when I can own multiple boats.
One of my latest ideas - one which I have not researched at all - is to get a buddy to drive me up to Lake Itasca, drop me off, and I'll sail/paddle down to Minneapolis. On a grander scale, I would like to do this all the way down to the gulf, but again I haven't researched it at all and don't know the logistics. Doing this in a canoe might be, to say the least, fool-hardy.

So we'll see what happens.

I mean this blog to be a journal of record for myself, housing links to various resources for my various adventures, thoughts, progress along the way, but it is my hope that maybe others will enjoy reading along, and perhaps benefit from my thoughts, research, and plans.