Strange things happen over a period of time. The dot com bubble happened. Up until the year 2000, I was designing printed circuit boards for a living in the San Francisco bay area. The whole silicon valley life. By the late winter / spring of 2000, I was getting burnt out to doing electronic design. My daughter was a little over a year old, and what a year that was. Finally I could feel the economy slowing. For the past 15 years I was self employed designing circuit boards for a wide range of businesses. By this time I felt work drying up. My wife Emily and I knew it was a time for a change.

I'm originally from Long Island NY and Emily and I had been visiting friends and family every year or so since we met. Since wooden boating was a big part of our lives we would make side trips to Mystic CT to visit the Mystic Seaport. Over the years we began to spend more time in Mystic than visiting friends and family and got to know the area well. Since we needed a change and loved Mystic, we decided to relocate. We sold the house and took Sea Runner II with us to settle in Noank CT. We moved in Labor Day 2000.

We moved Sea Runner II to Noank Shipyard that was relatively close to our home. She needed some planking work and I took me a few weeks to get her launched. My work on her did not go unnoticed. I put the word out that I was looking for work repairing wooden boats and a few days, I luckily I was able to find work with Rick Waters Boatbuilders of Noank.

I was in heaven. Working with Rick tought me lots of tricks and techniques and I used them working on Sea Runner II. In the winter of 2001 I started Star Distributing LLC selling Smith & Co products. I enjoyed what I was doing but I was stretched too thin in both cash and time. The dot com bubble pretty much wiped out my stock holdings and Sea Runner was decaying faster than I could patch her up. By 2003 I moved Sea Runner II next to my garage until things got better.

Jerry loved his boat but not the upkeep. I informed him when I sold the boat that she needed a new deck. Over time he had some repairs done but nothing as involved as a new deck. Unfortunately Jerry was diagnosed with cancer and by 2009 was in bad shape. He too tried finding a new home for Nada Bear with no takers. Finally he offered to give her back to us. How could I say no? Our extended family got together the funds and had the boat shipped cross country to us here in Noank. These pictures are from the first days here:

Click pictures for larger images.

Winter was closing in fast and snow was in the forecast. On went the cover that was included with the boat. This was a sun cover and I would learn by spring that it don't like snow.