Hi! We are Susan and Matt
We live in San Diego, and we have fallen in love with the sailing lifestyle!
Matt
Matt is an engineer by trade and training, and has been around boats most of his life. As a kid his family had small power and row boats on a lake in Oregon. Shortly after moving to San Diego, he bought a Hobie 16 and had a few fun years sailing that boat on Mission Bay. But alas, other hobbies took over and the boat went away.
Fast forward many years, and Matt got the sailing bug in a big way. It started with an ASA 101 (intro to keel boats) class, then quickly progressed through the ASA classes up through 114 (multi-hulls), 105 (navigation) and 106 (advanced cruising). All of this while renting via a great club in San Diego. Through that same club, Matt got hooked on racing in Capri 22’s, and eventually became a mentor for many new sailors. He even spent a couple of years working part-time on a tall ship.
Growing up on a farm, Matt learned to be very self sufficient. As a result, he tackles most of the upgrades, maintenance, and repair projects himself. It seems at times that he is just as happy to work on boat projects as he is to sail… Well maybe he likes sailing a bit more. 🤣
Susan
Susan is a semi-retired graphic designer, and the creative one in the family. While she didn’t have a lot of exposure to boats growing up, she has really taken to sailing in the last few years.
She started with an ASA 101 class with a local club, and then moved on to bigger boats with the ASA 103 class. Along with Matt, she spent many years renting boats from the club and honing her skills. But it wasn’t until purchasing del Sol that she really fell in love with sailing.
Now she wants to spend as much time as possible on the boat, and has even enjoyed time at the dock with our “condo on the water”.
Susan is the driving force for all of the cosmetic upgrades, as well as tackling all of the sewing projects.
del Sol
“del Sol” is our 1987 Catalina 36 (Mk I) that we bought in the spring of 2019. She is our first “big” boat, and we love her dearly. We wanted something that was big enough to be comfortable for day sails as well as light cruising, but small enough to be easily handled by the two of us. For now, she is perfect for what we need.
When we went looking for boats, we quickly realized that anything in our price range was going to be older and have some issues. So our focus became finding a boat with a solid hull that we could renovate.
Immediately after purchase, we sent her to the yard to overhaul the standing rigging and get new bottom paint. At the same time, Matt started on a long list of projects that continues to this day.
She is well on her way to becoming exactly what we need, and we are learning a lot by upgrading system by system. Of course we enjoy sailing her, too!
We knew we loved to sail, and Matt enjoys projects, so we were ready for that. One thing that we did not expect was how much we were going to love spending time at the dock. We have met a community of great people at the marina, and we are spending a lot of weekends on our “condo on the water”. This has also opened up getting to know more of downtown San Diego for dinners and evening events. We especially like dinners in Little Italy.