So we bought a little sailboat....

It's kind of a old story. One day I woke up and wanted something more. Something different from the rat race that everybody else loves to follow.

I realized a long time ago that I just couldn't care less about celebrity news, what stars were dancing with who, or what was on TV last night. So I made the fatal mistake of reading a sailboat blog. Crap. Why couldn't I have read a exciting blog about stamp collecting?

The appeal was instantaneous. Just pull up your hook right off my little dock and work my way down through the locks at the end of Old Hickory Lake and BAMM! I'm in the frickin' Gulf of Mexico and can go anywhere in the world if I have a little wind and don't mind taking a long slow time getting there. I mean obviously sailing is almost free right?

BZZZZZZZ. Wrong answer. Not even close to free but it can be cheap if you can just let go of some of this consumerism that seems to be the norm in the good old USofA. 

That for me is going to be a big, big adjustment. I mean right now with my lovely big combined family I've got 5 kids, 3 houses (2 rentals), 7 cars, crazy bills, and two full time jobs feeding this monster. How in the f@!k are we going to make this happen with college looming and living the suburban "high life"?

BZZZZZZZ. Wrong answer #2. Did I just read that I have 5 kids? and they are almost college age? Dang. That is a problem. So maybe, just maybe, we better start out slow on our lake. 

BZZZZZZZ! Wrong answer #3.   Did I mention I never sailed in my life? Not even a little bit? Well OK, one time at a boy scout camp there was a ill-fated attempt at a sailing dingy that ended with all hands lost to the depths of the waist deep lake full of ducks and duck poop. Hell what if I'm terminally sea sick?

Did this slow me down? Well, not really.

Undeterred by minor details and against all advice I started shopping for a boat. After 2+ years of craigslist lurking and a few viewings of local boats proved fruitless. My budget was pretty bleak and nothing jumped out at us as we bottom shopped the below 5K price range for a lake sailboat we could learn on while having a place to spend the night on the water.

Then one night I saw the PumRunch