So, we made a big decision recently and decided to sell Prudence, our Cal 2-27 sailboat that we kept at a slip in the harbor. Selling her was the right thing for us to do at this time, although we had nothing (besides a few screaming kids episodes) but fun experiences and made wonderful memories with many members of our families and some friends. We love the harbor and being out on the water, so we are certainly going to miss her. But the void was filled--in a way--rather quickly when Jared found a good deal on a little 8-foot Sabot for sale at a thrift store in Perris (!). He and the boys went on a grand (exhausting) adventure tracking her down and bringing her back to the coast, but so far it's felt totally worth it. It could definitely use some fixing up and was missing some hardware, but that just spells a fun and very manageable project. We were able to keep our dingy rack on one of the docks in the harbor, so we will probably keep this down there. For now it's hanging out in our backyard, which makes it super easy to work on. Jared got off work a little early this evening, so we ran down to the harbor as fast as we could before the sun set for our maiden launching of our latest vessel. There was hardly any wind, but we found that this little boat is lots of fun. Levi was so disappointed that Jared took the first run alone--without him--that he screamed and cried, "Levi boat! Levi boat!" the entire time until Jared came back to the dock for him. Levi happily climbed right aboard and the two of them tooled around a bit, with Levi fitting just perfectly in the little boat (he calls it the "tiny boat") and munching on a baggie of crackers. Parker declared before we even left home this evening that he wasn't going to go out on the boat, but after watching Levi and Daddy having fun he finally relented and seemed to enjoy himself. I took a quick spin and had so much fun--I was reluctant to get too far from the dock since the wind was really dying and we haven't added any oars yet! But after my three minutes on the water I'm thinking that we are going to have to pick up another cheap Sabot someday so we can have a "His & Hers" pair and do some side-by-side racing :) It feels great to be excited about such a simple, tiny, inexpensive boat, and I think it's just beautiful to have gone right from an inboard-diesel-full-keel-27-foot sailboat to this little dingy that we can lift in and out of the truck by hand and that only has a mainsheet and a baseball bat for a tiller. It's hilarious and pretty awesome.
