Greetings to all, from David and
Brenda! This website is for all of you (and you know who YOU are!) who
have been asking us for pictures of Mahdee's progress. Since many of you
don't sail at all and aren't necessarily familiar with wooden boats, we
wanted you to have some background, history, and links to other web resources
with information about wooden boats and schooners in particular. As most
of you know, with us there's "always a project" and with the
sale of our wonderful Washington DC house this summer, we're now focusing
on another dream restoration project. So many of you enjoyed our home
with us and the Mahdee is really the "boat equivalent" of the
16th Street house for us. More on that thought in a later posting.
Why get a sailboat now? And why an old wooden schooner? Well, we also
owe you folks that explanation. A few of you remember "the dream"
and "the plan." We remember who snickered back in 1982 as
well as who bought us those sailing books and outdoorsy gear as wedding
presents! In short, when David and I married 24 years ago, we set a
goal that we'd be living our life on a sailboat by the time we'd been
married 25 years. When you're only 19 and 21 as we were, 25 years is
a long, long, time! About 18 months ago, we realized that if we didn't
shake up our lives and try to meet a self-imposed deadline of being
out of the house and on a boat by our 25th anniversary, we'd have to
set another more "realistic" deadline and we might not meet
it either! You may ask--what was not "realistic" about 25
years? And, by the way, when we give ourselves 25 years to make something
happen, it's a little embarrassing to admit that it actually did sneak
up on us a bit...OK, that's the "why now" part.
As an aside here--we imagine that some other folks will simply stumble
across the Mahdee site and may want to know a little about the people
involved in the project. Of course, we're also giving this web address
out to the wonderful people we've met who are helping us as we progress
with this project. For all who come to Mahdee's site who aren't friends,
family, and former co-workers who know us all-too-well, we've put together
here a few pics and this page of information about us, David and Brenda,
the people who are doing this Mahdee project. By education, we are both
engineers. Brenda has worked in construction management and mechanical
structures; David is also a retired Navy officer. We now own a small
technology business that has been operating in a mostly virtual fashion
for the past few years.
Our passions are technology, exploration, and historic preservation.
We continue to take advantage of our love of technology in our work.
We've indulged our desire for "exploration" through work-related
moves and international travel, as well as hobbies of wilderness canoeing,
backcountry skiing, biking, sailing, and backroad driving. We've engaged
in "historic preservation" via professional, volunteer, and
personal efforts to conserve and restore the historic elements around
us-be it buildings, open space conservation, or restoring the architectural
elements of our homes. And that is the answer to "why a 1931 wooden
schooner." This is another opportunity to conserve and restore
a little piece of America's history.
After our move this summer (2006), we took down our website with pictures
of various trips and projects/hobbies. We should have it back up again
sometime soon. Hopefully, we'll figure out how to do a real Blog with
Mahdee's site soon and the pics will be available here, too. But until
then, we've put a couple collages together for you to see. Just click
on the pictures at the right for the collages. One is of fun on the
water--sailing and canoeing; one is "get-togethers" you may
recognize; and one is of the DC-to-Nova Scotia driving trip we did in
our 1976 Saab, Buttercup, in 2003. Have fun looking!
Enjoy the Mahdee site. If you have questions or comments, feel free
to email (replace the "_at_" with @ and the _dot_ with .
webproject_at_mahdee_dot_com
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