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Alright..so maybe not so tragic...but whatever.
OK..I guess first things first. I was born at a very young age in Reno, Nevada. My parents were divorced or became so shortly. I'm sorta fuzzy about what happened then, but by the time my memory kicked in I was back living in Lake Tahoe, which is where I lived until I was 9. Then my mom moved to Wisconsin, and my Dad, who had custody, moved onto his 60 foot yatch in Florida.
Well, like I said, Dad had custody, so I moved on board Velocity II (the boat) with him. We spent a year or so in Palm beach Florida, then headed over to the Bahamas. We spent a fair deal of time in Marsh Harbor and Governors Harbor, as well as other smaller islands in the Bahamas.
After about a year there we went back to Miami Florida to have some repairs done on the boat. They were supposed to take a week or two. Anyhow, about a year later, 2 days before we were ready to leave Miami, hurrican Andrew hit Florida. My Dad and Step-mother tried to sail the boat south to safety, but were caught in the storm because of mechanical failures and had to be rescued by the coast guard. We never saw that boat again. Too bad. It was a nice boat.
We lost everything we owned on the boat, but we did get some insurance for the boat itself..not as much as the boat was worth, but we started looking for another boat with it. While we searched we lived in Ft. Lauderdale in an apartment, which wasn't all bad after a friend of mine that I had known before moved in down the street from us. After a while we bought a new boat, a 54' motorsailer named Vector I. We lived on it in Ft. Lauderdale for a while (actually on the same street we'd been in in the appartment).
At the end of seventh grade we finally left Florida again, and headed to the bahammas. About 2 days later I left from Nassau and flew to wisconsin to spend my summer vacation there, and at the the end I flew back to Georgetown (also in the bahammas) George town was cool..I met some of my favorite friends there. We spent several months there before we moved on.
When we did move on we did so fairly quickly. We got all the way down to the southern Turks and Caicos before we stopped for a while to wait for weather. When we left there we headed for the Dominican Republic. We had a somewhat unconfortable trip, which my parents found quite....scary. I slept through most of it.
I had a great time in the Dominican Republic, thanks in part to the beautiful girls from another boat named Cerith, who took me with them on a number of their outings. Unfortunately, my dad got a kidney stone the day after we arrived there, so he had to leave for Puerto Rico almost right away. Not a too much after that he sent some boat movers over to move the boat over to Boquaron, Puerto Rico.
We spent over 2 years in various parts of Puerto Rico, the first 8 of which were in Bocaron. I like boquaron a lot, even though I wish we had left a LITTLE sooner.. we spent over 8 months there. Most of my friends I met also lived on boats, but I did meet a few friends from the local area. Probably the best of these was Yaun, the son of the local traval agent.
After we left Boquaron we stopped for a while in Salinas,PR, at which point I went up for another summer in wisconsin. When I came back the boat was in Puerto Del Rey marina on the east side of Puerto Rico. (If you've seen the movie Captain Ron, then you've seen this marina...it's the one where he does the fancy docking manuever) We were there for several months, during which I had a pretty enjoyable time, thanks in the most part to my friends that lived there or showed up there periodically, especially the two more-than-lovely girls that lived on another boat named La Verne.
Eventually we got out of there at about Christmas time. We sailed around the Virgin Islands for about 6 or so months. I loved the Virgin Islands..they're very beautiful, have an average year-round tempereature of about 87 degrees, and had great snorkaling around St. John, which is almost all national park. I also met some really nice people in the VIs, and got to know one special girl much better while I was there. The VIs are also where I got into windsurfing, which is an awsome sport, so that improved my stay there as well...also got me into pretty good shape too. :) All in all I had a great time there.
If you happen to be in visiting the Virgin Islands make SURE you visit the Baths on Virgin Gorda. It's an awsome place, despite all the tourists milling around.
Somewhere around this point my Dad and step-mother decided that they wanted to move back to land, so eventually we sailed back to Puerto Del Ray, spent a couple of months there, and then sailed one long leg back up to the bottom of the Bahamas. A couple of days later we were back in George Town, and a few days after that, on the Forth of July, we sailed back into Ft. Lauderdale for the last time. I left for summer in Wisconsin a few days after that, and that was the last time I saw Vector I.
After spending summer in Wisconsin I decided, seeing as how I was staying on land, that I'd like to like to live for a while with my mom up there. Especially since the high school there was exceptionally nice. So I did. I had a great year. Good friends, nice school, nice town (Madison). Friday and/or Saturday nights were a blast. Got a drivers liscence. That's all I'm gonna say 'bout that.
The next summer I went to visit my Dad in Nelson, British Columbia, Canada. He made me stay there for the school year, which I wasn't very happy about. I was there for two years and met a number of friends, some cooler than others, but in all it wasn't the happiest time of my life. Nelson's a nice enough town to visit, but living there blows. There's nothing to do, and hick/redneck/jock assholes abound.
Fortunately however, I did like most of the people in my Grad Class, so I had a good time during grad, and enjoyed most of my classes. I'm still not too unhappy about leaving though :)
some more Nelson pictures
At the beginning of the summer of '98 my Dad moved back to Lake Tahoe, and I moved with him and spent the summer there.
Well, if you're all the way down here I've scammed you into reading my whole (shortend version) life story. Now you can go back to the home page for the interesting stuff :)
