This is a snippet from a post on another board about how we got into boating...
~~~I'm no stranger to Oregon. Our honeymoon (1970) was a tour of 49 states in a Ford Bronco, to decide where we wanted to settle. We chose Grants Pass Oregon out of all 49 states (didn't get to Alaska until '05), eventually moving to Ashland. Those were the days and today we still consider the Rogue Valley our real home.
Ironic, it was boating that made us leave. I'm a born traveler...just love being on the move. From Oregon, we explored the West Coast by car and motorcycles. My wife and I each had 175 Hondas...hers was a CL175 (read road bike) and mine was an SL175 (read dirt bike). On a wild hair one day, I said to my new wife, "Let's ride these bikes to the East Coast" figuring I'd get a firm "Hell No!" and get it out of my system.
She said, "I can be ready in 2 weeks." And so off we went, over 7,000 miles, each on our own tiny bike. Had a blast.
About a year later, there was a huge gas scare...remember the rationing? I put extra tanks on the Bronco and we figured we'd make one last cross country trip before the gas ran out. On that trip we met a freind in Charleston SC who was in the process of buying a sailboat. We returned home determined to travel by sail after the gas ran out.
Two small sailboats later, we'd run out of inland lakes and were ready for bigger waters. The Pacific however, scared the daylights out of me with it's bars and long distances between harbors. We answered an ad in Sail Magazine for crew on a sailboat out of Syracuse NY, heading for the Caribbean.
We learned through a month or two of correspondence with the owner that there were 12 couples vying for the position, and with my limited sea experience I knew we'd have to do something drastic go get aboard. We sold all our stuff, listed our $6,500 house with a rental agency and drove the Bronco to Syracuse uninvited. I knocked on the fellow's front door, introduced my self and my wife and told him we were here to accept the position. He said he hadn't offered me the position and there were 12 other couples in the running. I spun around with an outstretched arm, encompassing the front yard and smugly inguired, "We'll where the hell are they?"~~~~
Anyway, that's how we got our start in boating.