I first got hooked on "boating" as a small child with three older brothers, and a father that loved the water, and canoeing. One of my first memories is of climbing down the cellar stairs so that I could go boating in the garage. We'd had a hurricane and the basement had enough water in it that the brothers were launching the canoe! I was told I was too young and sent back upstairs. Years later my uncle took me sailing in a cute little wooden mono he had up in Maine. I was smitten. Not long after that I bacame friends with Danny Grinspoon. His father was into sailing, and had a Sunfish that he'd cartop to a local lake. That was it! Some years later my mother got us a Sunfish. It got a little use initially, but the teen years were not weathered well in my family, and I opted to sail with friends on their families boats instead. When I was in my late twenties I pulled the Sunfish out of storage, and started sailing every chance I got. I'd seen cats and always dreamed of sailing on one, but the opportunity didn't come along until 1995. I ended up getting an ancient H14 and taking it down to Gooseberry to sail. I shared the boat with a coworker. It wasn't a good 2 man boat. Later that summer, I ran into Fleet 448 at their annual Island Hop. We brought the 14 down to sail with them a few times, and I ended up crewing to get lessons from some of the H16 sailors.Dan Christiensen(?) was a great teacher. I was fully hooked! These days I dream of getting back to the water as resposibilities have pulled me away...