Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Sailing and Sailboats

Sailing is a big part of my life, it's my main hobby, it's what my website is based on, it's what I think about every day, it's how want to live for the rest of my life.

I am fairly new to sailing and sailboat though, I have only been around them for about four years now. I have learned alot in that short amount of time though.

When you own a sailboat, one thing that you have to always do is, maintenance. Performing maintenance on a sailboat is not something anyone can just do, there are alot of things that you need to learn before you go messing with a sailboat. This being true, if I want to get serious with the sailing thing I need to learn maintenance.

So in order to learn more about working on sailboats, I have gotten into buying older sailboats and restoring them and then selling them for a small profit. It's fun, a great learning experience and way to make a bit of extra cash.

The first sailboat I owned purchased for about three thousand dollars. It was in working condition but it wasn't perfect. I learned how to sail on it and fixed it up a bit and sold it and nearly doubled my money. Now, I have a sailboat that wasn't in sailing condition when I bought it, but it's a project. It needs alot more work than my first sailboat but that's partly the reason that I bought it. So that I would have to do the work and then I would learn the trade and become knowledgable on the subject so that I could apply that knowledge to larger and more expesive boats.

So, with the Lord willing, maybe I can make my mistakes on a small cheap sailboats so that I hopefully will not make large expensive mistakes are on a high dollar sailboat.

Why I train with free-weights.

I excersize alot but I am not a memeber of a gym or anything like that. I don't want to have to spend the money on a gym membership when I can get a better workout at home.

My older sister has moved out of the house and I now have the upstairs to myself. I have turned her old bedroom into my excersize room, how great! My personal gym consists of; 7 dumbells (2 45lbs, 2 35lbs, 2 10lbs, 1 40lbs), a basic weightbench that can be adjusted to various inclines, a balance ball (the big beachball thing), a pull-up bar that hangs in the door-frame, and an eliptical machine. Other than the eliptical, everything is pretty cheap. The only reason I have the eliptical is because my mother wanted to start excersizing so she bought the eliptical but NEVER even go on it, so I have it now.


With this meager bit of equipment, I think I get a great workout.

Freeweights (dumbells) give you a better workout than the gym's fancy excersize machines. The machines kind of "assist" you in the movements, the guide and balanace the weight. With free weights however, your muscles have to work harder to balance and steady the weight which gives you a much better workout and builds a wider variety of muscles. With machines, specific muscles are targeted rather than a large number of different muscles.

So, if you want to start working out without having to spend much money, then dumbells are definately the way to go!

I love the water!

Water is big part of my life, from sailing to freediving to drinking it every day.

I became a certified SCUBA diver about two years ago and it has been a great hobby. My dive buddies and I have dove in the Gulf of Mexico many times in about 80' of water. We have seen alot of really neat things that most people never have to opportunity to see in person. One time we saw a live shark! It was swimming around are boat as we were preparing to dive the wreck we were anchored at. One of my friends spotted the shark and I immediately dawned my mask and dove in to get a closer look. It wasn't a large shark, probably 3-4 feet but it was still a shark.

A little over a year ago I bought a 29' sailboat that stays in the water in the Panama City, Florida. During the summer you can find me down there nearly every weekend enjoying the wind and water life. On the boat, SCUBA gear can be awkward so I have taken up freediving.

The freediving I do is pretty much snorkeling, but I train so that I can hold my breathe longer than a normal person underwater. I also have a pair of large fins tat are for freediving and allow you to propel yourself underwater with a lot more power than a pair of smaller "normal" fins.

The water is great and I can't wait until warmer weather comes so I can jump in!

I'm a bit of a capenter.

If I had to pick one skill to describer myself, I would probably say carpentry.

I have been around carpentry all of my life. My mother started a roof truss manufacturing company when I was born and I have worked there four summers and periodically throughout my life (today actually). Now I work there whenever help is needed.

I have also worked for a construction company for three summers and a little more, this is where I learned most of my house carpentry skills. I learned alot of things from the owner, who is my first cousin. He has taught me alot of valuable skills which will benefit me throughout my life, I have no doubt.

I have dabbled a little with furniture making also. I started designing and building furniture out of antique heart pine by hand about a year ago. I built a few beautiful pieces, but the business never really took off.

My latest carpentry project is a plywood sailing dinghy that I am building. It has been great fun so far and building a boat is a lot different than building a house. I plan on using the dinghy as a tender for my Watkins 29 sailboat that is slipped (docked) in Panama City, Florida.

I'm a bit of a health freak.

Yes, I am.

For the past two years I have been pretty persistent about working out and I have been strict on my diet for about the past six months or so. I could really tell a difference when i stopping drinking beer and eating fried food and other unhealthy things. Being in shape makes you feel great a make you feel good about yourself.

I work out at least two times a week. Right now it about to be spring and I am wokring on building up my arms and chest. I have never really focused much on my chest until the past four months or so and I can definately tell a difference since then. When I first started my chest workout I couldn't complete much of the routine, now I have completed the routine and added another twenty pounds to each excersize so I think I am progressing. Although, I think it is about time to change up the routine because my body may be getting used to the exercises and I will not benefit from them as much like when I first started.

I love my guitar.

Like a lot of people, I love music! My favorite music is country, and Merle Haggard is my favorite artist. He sings about the hard times in his life and his songs really have meaning too them.

I started playing guitar when I was about 14 and I enjoyed it then but I really wasn't very good. I have never taken lessons but I have had a few people show me a few things here and there, but most of what I have learned has been from the internet, what a great resource.

I love playing my resonator, and it is sitting beside my computer in it's stand as I type. I pic it up a few times nearly every day and play for a little while. I have certainly progressed since first days playing and I think I have above average skills.

I enjoy singing too, a karaoke bar is a great place to laugha and have fun. I mostly like to sing and play to myself in my room when no one is around. I will play for freinds and family but not if I am pressured or bragged about to much. I am definately nothing to bragg about so when people do (mostly my mother) it makes me uncomfortable and I think people are expecting more than I have to offer.

I am a Sailor!

About four years ago I bought a sailboat off of Ebay. I had never set foot on a sailboat but I had and interest in them and I liked the thought of going somewhere without having to pay for a lot of fuel, so a sailboat was my answer.

I had been boating all of my life, but only on powerboats and never a sailboat. I knew next to nothing about sailboats but over the years I think I have learned a great deal. Most from reading online or sailing books and then a little from trail and error. Learning to sail and learning abotu sailboats has been great fun, I think it is something that will have a place in my live till the day I die.

If you have never been sailing, TRY IT!

How I am making money online.

In October of 2008 I created my first real (non-free) website, Sailing and Such. My intentions were to help other sailors and information that I had been looking hard for, easier to find. Mainly, this information was about sailboat project, sailboat maintenance and anything to do with sailboat work.

Once I created the website, people started visiting and complimenting the site and saying what a great idea it was to have a lot ofthat kind of information in one place. I really enjoyed the comments and they made me work harder and make the website larger and larger.

Then, I started reading up on making money online and I registered for Google Adsense which was a great decision. I wasn't getting alot of traffic to my website so I really havn't made all that much money in the first three months but it's a start. Making any money online is a great thing to me and the website is something I do not have to actually "do" to make money, it just does it on it's own.

Now, I am venturing into something called PayPerPost where I plan to post articles on my blogs about certain products and stuff, and get paid for it. We will see how it works!

My dream is create a steady income online so that I can someday live on sailboat and cruise wherever it is warm!

A little bit about myself.

Thanks for checking out my blog!

My name is Trip and I was born in Alabama in 1987 so that makes me 21 at the moment. I have lived in the country most all of my life but I have always enjoyed new technologies like computer and other electronics.

In the past year, I have really started getting into the internet and I am looking for different ways to make money online (which I will blog about in a later post). The internet is an amazing thing with endlss oportunities, I can't wait to see what it is like in ten years!

I was born in raised in the country and I spent my years living on a farm working with horses and cattle. I have enjoyed the country live immensely but I do enjoy the more "city slicker" things in life to like the internet. Some of my friends, even my girlfriend call me a nerd at times but I am many things and a computer nerd just happens to be one of them.