Our oldest daughter was car shopping lately and has been taking me along for advice. New car fever is contagious, so I never should have accepted, but she’s my daughter so I felt obligated ;)

I decided it would be fun to go car shopping for something to replace our 2000 Durango R/T. We’ve had it for six years now. That’s possibly the longest I’ve owned a daily driver. I always seem to get the itch for something different.

The R/T is loaded with pretty much every option available and sold for a painful 36K back in 2000. It only has 55K miles on it and it’s about as nice as they come. It’s also paid for! So, why do I want to replace it? I’ve become bored with it and 8-MPG in this day of almost $3.00 a gallon gas, causes severe anxiety attacks at the pump.

While I was out looking at different vehicles, I ran into an old friend who was a regular customer at our bike shop for many years. He and his son were looking for something for the son to drive to college. They were interested in the Durango so they drove it, loved it and almost bought it until they came to their senses. It would not be economical college transportation when it came to fuel consumption.

The Saturday before last, I accompanied my daughter to the Honda dealership, where she traded her 1999 GTP in on a new 2006 Honda Civic Coupe. Tim McVay, who helped install the body and has been on hand several other times when extra man-power was needed, is the service manager there, so I know she’s in good hands. It’s a cool little car and you can’t beat 40-MPG!

Later that evening, we were at a high school graduation open house and I told my car-shopping story to my nephew. His fiancée had wrecked her car and was looking for a replacement. They knew our Durango was in like-new shape and wanted to buy it when the banks opened on Tuesday (after Memorial Day).

With the Durango "sold" we diligently started looking at other vehicles but we couldn’t find as nice a vehicle for the same price and we really didn’t want to go back to a car payment again. We couldn't help thinking we were making a mistake.

Sunday evening we went to a graduation ceremony and when we got back home we got a call from Kelvin. I’d bought a five dollar raffle ticket for a 16-foot Hobie Cat sail boat a few weeks earlier and had won it!

Our boat is the closest one in the photo, with the white sail and blue streak at the top.

That changed everything. I called my nephew and told him the deal was off. Suddenly I was thinking of slip rentals, trailers, beaches, sun and sailing. The new-car fever was completely gone!

I was miraculously cured and realized in my brief bout of clarity that the Durango makes an excellent pulling vehicle. I’ll pay a bit more per trip - it’s still less than a car payment and a sail boat looks great behind it :)

Last Wednesday I drove the `33 to another show, this time at the Veterans Hospital. I won a ball cap door prize and "People’s Choice" award (the car won it, not me). I’m really enjoying this lucky streak; however that makes three wins so it has to be over now.



We finally got to see (and sail!) the boat on Saturday. We’re going to rent a slip on "Hobie Beach" at Lewis and Clark Lake by Yankton, SD (about an hour away). A beach slip is the next best thing to having a lake cabin. There’s a great bunch of people down there, so I’m sure we’ll have a lot of fun this summer.

Kelvin has been sailing for 26 years and is teaching me the ropes (no pun intended) where both sailing and boat maintenance is concerned. He’s raced Hobie Cats for most of that time. He even manufactures a few accessories that are sold through various sailing suppliers. The power license plate will make a new addition to his long list of inventions.

After many years of trudging his wheelchair through the sand, the state of South Dakota and the local sailing community poured a concrete sidewalk from the parking lot to his slip. That and some plastic floor mat, make it much easier for him to access his boat now. There’s never a lack of people willing to lend him a hand when his boat needs to be carried up or down the beach or pushed off. They’re a great bunch of caring and compassionate people and Kelvin’s a pretty cool guy.

My great grandfather was a Norwegian Sailor, so I come from sailor linage. Kelvin tells me I’ve caught on really quickly - that must be why. Maybe it's karma. I have to say it feels like destiny fulfilled when I’m in my happy zone skimming along on one hull. I’m learning sailing terms like jib, masthead, forestay, block and step, but I put them into terms that I can relate to; like the sail is the engine and the block is the throttle pedal. I’ve also learned that sailboats live on water, run on beer, and sink on whisky. Valuable stuff :)

The boat is in our driveway for a week or two while Kelvin and I recondition it. It’s a vintage 1982 and could use a little work but it still sails great. I’ve replaced the bald trailer tires and repaired the trailer lights and wheel bearings. We’re going to make our own tramp (trampoline - the part you sit on) and new rigging. I’m also going to add a few other touches to make it feel more like our own, but intend to keep it cheap.

I won’t blow Project33 off in favor of sailing, so don’t worry. I’ve been starting work early so I can get off at 5:30pm. I work on the boat from 6pm to sundown (around 9pm), take a short break and then I work on the car in the garage from about 10:30 to midnight. The trunk will be finished before the car is in the Dashboard by Karls car show and sound-off Saturday (see- the car show came before sailing ;)

The boat needs to be finished ASAP because we have a neighborhood ordinance that prohibits parking recreational vehicles in your driveway or on your property for an extended period of time. The car has to be completely finished by June 21st because it *may* be leaving town on the PPG semi to be displayed in their booth at various runs across the nation. It isn’t a certainty at this point but I need to be prepared. That gives both projects roughly the same deadline.

As I’m replacing boat parts the old ones are going into jars and boxes, to be used on future projects. This means that our next street rod project will most likely have sail boat parts as well as bicycle parts on it! :)