Tin Lizzie – background

I’m going to try to tell the story of how we came to buy TL. It’s going to take a while, and will take several posts.

Generally speaking my sailboat racing needs have been met quite nicely in dinghies in recent years. We have a Snipe and a Laser, and both are kept in competitive form. There is great club racing on Guelph Lake and at Water Rats, and lots of weekend regattas in driving distance.

I’ve thought lots over the years since we moved to SW Ontario about use cases for a larger sailboat, but could never come up with one. I have a few favourite boats from the 1980s, and even when they started getting cheap I wasn’t really tempted. Samantha and I both were never tempted by a cottage, and a boat sitting in a marina is worse. Not my thing. And the ongoing costs are high.

I don’t really sail for fun and relaxation. I like to race, and if I’m not racing I want high performance sailing. And I want to do things really cheap, and I don’t have a big crew. Tough set of requirements.

I should say that I did some serious racing with a young crew on a 34′ ULDB in the 80s. Inshore and offshore. Lots of thrills, lots of victories. See if you can spot me!

When I left Chicago and the boating business in 1993 it was an interesting time. The Melges 24 was just coming out. There was a growing fleet of F27 trimarans there. It was the early days of the sport boat. I *loved* the new Farr 395. And then I became a banker and raised three kids and had fun in Little London and kinda stopped paying attention.

My friend Christian has a modern sport boat, a VX One. He’s invited me to do a regatta later this summer and I’m pumped. Watch the video linked above. When he saw pics of TL he said they look the same 🙂

Anyway, mostly I’ve just given some background of what my thinking was until last fall.

That’s a good place to stop. More later.