My brother Gary and I got hooked on sailing in Wisconsin during the late 1960’s and I’ve loved the sport ever since. Back when Niki and I were looking to purchase a boat for the Great Loop, someone told me about the 5 stages of a sailor’s life. They are 1) Sailboat, 2) Motorboat, 3) Motorhome, 4) Nursing home, and 5) Funeral home. When we bought Joy Girl, I made the move from stage 1 to stage 2. After our Loop we moved on to the next stage when we purchased our first motor home, and further ensconced ourselves in that phase of life when we traded up to our current “wheel estate”, Liscia.

I guess one does not ordinarily move backwards on the scale. But not only are we moving the wrong way, we are leapfrogging all the way back to stage 1. Yes, after years of missing the water, of dreaming, researching, and recently even trying a few out, we decided to purchase Niki’s and my first sailboat! And as of October 11 (our 8th anniversary) we officially closed the deal on our new boat. She looks like this:

These photos are not our actual boat because she’s not in the water at this time. Our boat is a 2017 Jeanneau 349, a French built 34′ sloop currently in Waukegan, IL. Having successfully passed her survey and sea trial, we’ll store her there “on the hard” until next spring. I’ve already lined up several friends to help sail her across Lake Michigan and up to Charlevoix, MI, where we plan to keep her. Here are a few shots that show how her interior is laid out:

Things have really fallen into place for us on this journey back to stage 1. We were close to purchasing a different boat in Holland, but it was “too Niki” (lots of comfort features) without enough go-fast performance gadgets for a former sailboat racer. We then looked at higher performance boats that turned out to be “too Craig”. But the Jeanneau is sleek and modern for Craig with a large cockpit and swim platform for Niki. This one is just right! Like Goldilocks, we finally found the perfect solution.

While all this was happening in one corner of our life, blessings dropped in on several other fronts. Northern Michigan is a beautiful place to boat, so slips are extremely difficult to get (marinas have 3-12 year waiting lists). We were blessed to find an outstanding boat broker, Jeff Glenny, who was incredibly helpful, knowledgeable and gave us expert guidance. He also found us a slip for the summer and storage for the winter. We feel extremely fortunate to have worked with Jeff.

We also needed a place to park Liscia. We scored a victory on that front too, as we were able to secure a full seasonal spot at our favorite RV resort, Sun Outdoors Petoskey. So now we have a beautiful place to spend the summer, be near the new boat, and be able to hear that amazing Petoskey High School Steel Drum Band (see our “Pure Petoskey” post for more details on them).

Of course, no post from Team Joy Girl would be complete without at least one cat photo. Here’s Roswell studying the latest Cruising World magazine, along with him doing his imitation of my favorite bird, the seagull.

And just for the halibut, here’s a bit of Photoshop fun I had with a shot of Niki driving a friend’s boat. Astute readers will now know the name of our new boat:

Until next time, as the saying goes in boating: “fair winds and following seas”.