A bit of back story

Alright, so to backtrack a bit! My name is Ryan, I've been sailing since around the age of 8 when a very derelict Snark sailboat washed up near my parents house. It had a tree growing out of it and only floated because it was mostly made of Styrofoam but I cleaned it up and polled it around the lake until I found the original owner, and traded him a dock I built in exchange for the sails and mast. I sailed my little decrepit Snark boat around the lake, using a paddle as a rudder and wrapping the main sheet around my leg because it took both hands to hold the rudder in place. Literally all of my first swear words were spoken on that small quiet New England Lake. By the time I was twelve the neighbors had finally had more than enough of my little mostly rotten foam Snark and it mysteriously disappeared. It was soon replaced by a much less decrepit sunfish with a real rudder and everything! The neighborhood returned to its original New England tranquility as the waters rang with fewer and fewer swears. By then I learned the exact balance of my little boat and only capsized when I wanted to, such as when friends were over or I had convinced my mom to finally go out sailing with me (She yelled one of the final swears to really ring out across the lake when I said 'watch this!' and promptly flipped the boat over).


Time went by, I grew up and moved to Plymouth. My little boat disappeared during a storm and sailing became just one more thing I planned to try again someday. Then in 2009 while visiting my Mom at the old house by the lake one of the neighbors who had been the most patient with me in my early sailing days offered me his Cape Cod Builders Mercury 15 bay sailer, complete with trailer and all rigging, for 50 cents, with the provision that I fixed her up properly. I was back in business. I learned fiberglass work, rigging, painting, varnishing, and everything else about boat work by first doing it thoroughly wrong on my poor little 15 ft bay sailer. However! By the time I was done she looked terrible! But she was sailable again! Each year I would repaint and revarnish, and slowly fix everything I almost fixed the year before until I was actually fixing things the way they were supposed to be.

My little CCB Mercury 15 In one of its incarnations

All this sailing and fixing began to give me a really, really, bad idea. I started to watch eBay and craigslist for boats in the 25 to 35 ft range. I joined every forum I could find and read every angry post about rig design, hull shape and material, bottom paint, and well, most every topic involving sailing and boats seemed to turn into angry back and forth posting, but I read them anyway. The main thing I learned is everybody regurgitates their own hearsay, especially professionals... After a lot of reading, searching, and almost learning things that either sounded like common sense or slightly contrary enough to common sense that it could actually be correct over the common sense, I found a Grampian 26 for sale in Provincetown for the whopping price of free. The rest of this blog is all about my Grampian and everything it is took to keep her sailing.

Some days its about relaxing

Some days its about Adventuring

All the days aboard Jera are magical