The story of the sailboats actually starts with a regular Aluminum boat.
In 2018 or so, an old friend called me up and told me that there was a boat that I could have for free if I would just come get it. Now, there is an old saying that there is no such thing as a free boat, and yes, this old boat was full to the brim with scummy water, mosquitos, and oddly enough corn cobs, and yes I did have to suck the end of a hose and get some of this mixture in my mouth to start siphoning it out, but I did not spend a single dollar on the aquisition of that lovely boat.
A poorly conceived pressure wash, a near sinking, and a trip to the hardware store to buy a plug later, and boat club was born. My best friends from high school and I ratified a constitution that declared us the admirals of the nearby lake, and we fancied ourselves pirates each summer and would spend a signifigant amount of time struggling to get the ancient little engine to start, which always would be troublesome right as a strom was blowing in and we were in the middle of the lake.
A few of our proudest moments include another near sinking due to the sheer volume of people we managed to convince to come aboard, the time when the bowline sheared off in a storm while we were at the rope swing and the boat slowly drifted off and we had to swim out to get it, and conspiring to disconnect the spark plug every time my best friend went to start the motor in front of girls, and then shaking our heads in a knowing way.
As school ended, we moved on to different things, but one summer I took it upon myself to convert the boat into a sailboat, so I forged a mast step, made a mast out of an old sprinkler pipe, and a sail out of a canvas dropcloth. It actually worked! Not particularly well, but it did sail.
Recently the torch for Boat Club has been passed on to my little brother's friends, as I waved goodbye to the boat going off to grace their driveway.