This idea actually started a few years ago with Debra Theodore who came on the Bella Donna for a sailing lesson. She always dreamt of being able to sail a boat since she was a little girl and interviewed me in detail as to what possessed me. 

 I myself was crazy about flotation, I would nail stacks of wood from my dads shop together into the shape of boats and ships and float them in the puddles at the Shawsheen School across the street from my house in Tewksbury, MA,. As I got older I would make my way down to the river to try and find away to float to the other side because that is where the fish were. If something was floating I had to attempt to turn it somehow into a boat, a gas tank from an old car I found out made a terrible boat, and tipped over as soon as I tried to ride it.

 Patience some how paid off. One day a old oil tank boat floated down the river from the next neighborhood up stream. This boat was an old oil tank that some one cut in half put a board on each end and one in the middle. The kids in my neighborhood claimed this rusted chunk of sharded steel as our boat and played with it most of the summer until it either floated away or someone down stream stole it to use as theirs. I remember four of these floating marvels coming down the river so someone up stream must have the ambition to cut at least two oil tanks in half. Eventually one of these boats ended up in Guy Mannarino's yard and sincehe lived right on the Shawsheen River it was taken care of better and we had it for a while longer. 

 Guy lived in the woods so his whole neighborhood became a construction sight, which under the cover of darkness supplied us with enough building material to fabricate our own boats that ended up being these triangle shaped boats just about possibly four to six feet long. It would take us a few days to build these boats, I believe we built two and they were made to sort of float by covering the seams with roofing cement. Guys mom supplied us the turpentine needed to clean us up after that part of our construction phase. We would spend our days during the summer constantly playing on the river, we would play sink the bismark as we would try to sink each other.

 It was a great adventure that we had as kids and our parents let a lot slide because we were playing out doors. 

This is where my love of boats started, Debra Theodore's started young as well, she emailed me a few weeks back that she bought a small sail boat for herself this past fall.

 If you have the inclination towards boating especially sailing this is a great time to start thinking about maybe a sailing lesson with Captain Ed's Sailing whether as a Family Hands On Sailing Adventure or as a group lesson we can serve your boating needs.