I've been on many adventures through the years so decided to put this page together to compile most of them into one location. I have to thank my family and many friends that are still around and those that have gone that made these adventures worthwhile! I'll be adding to this occasionally since I'm definitely not done with my crazy adventures yet!
Trip sailing from Ft. Myers to Key West on Tessa - February 2010
Trip sailing from Ft. Myers, FL to Catawba, OH back in 1999/2000
The Cabana I built out on Guanaja, Honduras in 2006/2007
Feb 2003 Trip to Honduras (my first trip)
I have lots of old pictures I want to add so keep looking here since I'll be adding more from back in the Lake Erie boating days as well as when I lived in Key West and who knows what else!
This has been a long interesting journey so far! I think I could give Jimmy Buffett interesting material for a song! Here's what's happened so far (with some interesting events omitted since not appropriate for publication!) ...
I attended catholic school for 12 years, went to Ohio State for 5 years and changed majors who knows how many times! After I left Ohio State and moved back home, I attended a technical College for a year and obtained an Associates Degree in Mechanical Engineering, graduating with Honors (3.96 GPA!). From there, I managed to get a pretty worthless job for 15 months at a foundry as a lab tech making about what I would have earned working at McDonalds. I got pissed at them due to no pay increases that were promised, so I finally quit. I went job hunting and landed a great job as a lab tech in R&D at a local pump manufacturing company. I really enjoyed this position due to the variety of projects I was assigned. Well, that wasn't meant to last! The parent company decided to pull Research & Development from my factory and they laid me off 2 days before Christmas in 1992!!
It turns out that I was heading to Key West, Florida for New Years vacation, so when I went, I had a new attitude towards working for someone else for a living! I spent the whole following year looking for another job without much luck. It was getting cold at the end of 1993 and I decided it was time to either get a real job or move south. That choice was easy. I decided to pack up everything and move to Key West since it was the warmest place I could drive to! Well, after a 40+ hour drive straight through doing 50 mph with a boat and 2 Sea Doos on the truck, My brother (who came along to help) and I arrived in Key West.
In time (and leaving out many interesting stories!), I bought a cheap houseboat to live on and docked it in downtown Key West, just up the street from Sloppy Joes. Living in downtown Key West in the mid '90s has to still be one of the cooles things I've ever experienced too.
In the mean time, a bartender I knew at one of my favorite watering holes bought an old 36' leaky wooden sailboat. He told me he wanted to sail to Honduras, and since I'm always up for an adventure, I told him I would lend a hand! The boat was a real piece of work and after a one month journey, several storms, almost sinking in the middle of the Gulf Stream, running aground, breaking the rigging and living conditions that I really don't want to think about, we arrived at Guanaja, the Eastern Island in the three Honduran Bay Islands chain. Along the way, you learn many things about a person when on a small boat. That's why I got the hell out of Honduras and headed back to Key West!
Once back in Key West, I found I had my fill of the expensive cost of living in Key West so around 1998, I sold my houseboat, packed my car and moved back up North.
Once I was back in Ohio, I moved in with and took care of my handicapped grandfather. To keep busy I taught myself HTML programming and put the SeaDooSource website together to help people do their own repairs on Sea Doo watercraft. I filled the site with the knowledge I obtained from past experiences in the Sea Doo field since I've been involved with them and owned since 1992.
Around 2003 I reconnected with my friend Brian who I had went with in 1995 to purchase property in Guanaja, Honduras (Easternmost of the 3 Bay Islands) for a dive resort. I ended up going down there some and helping him out with the resort and dive trips for room and board, which ended up being some of the best times I've had in life. Over the years I probably racked up over 500 hours of SCUBA diving in day and night dives.
With the Sea Doo help site SeaDooSource, people were asking me constantly about where to buy parts so skipping ahead a little, in 2014 I decided to start a business (OSD Marine) selling Sea Doo parts. At first I rented a place with shop space but tired of paying rent, in the fall of 2015 I purchased a 18,000 sq.ft. building in downtown Mansfield for OSD Marine.
That's where I'm still located and what I'm still doing as of today and shipping parts all over the world!
Oh... and I'm finally back on the water now, owning 2 cabin cruisers up on Lake Erie. A 30' Sea Ray and a 32' Wellcraft. It's freshwater but will have to do for now!
My life's been interesting and family has been what shapes me since birth. Since it would take a whole encyclopedia size page to go through what I've experienced through life, I'll instead start when sun and water got into my blood and took over my brain...
I've drank beers with movie stars, drank wine with bums, hung out with rock stars, drank in the Compleat Angler in Bimini (Hemingway's hangout... it unfortunately burned down and some really cool history was lost), fell off my bike handing Arnold (the Terminator) a business card, drank with Captain Tony on a gambling cruise (RIP Capt Tony), had rum & cokes with the late Mel Fisher on more than one occasion at the Schooner Wharf, been Knighed by Mel Fisher one night after lots of rum (I still regret not stopping by the museum the next day to get my certificate), been a judge of a Hawaiian Tropic Bikini Contest, been inside Jimmy Buffett's studio, attended Dale Earnhardts' last race at the Daytona 500 (the only Nascar race I've experienced), rode out a hurricane in a boat, been to Oktoberfest (the real one), gone 160mph on the Autobahn, been in the Coliseum (Rome), Stood on top of the Eiffel Tower and taken in the view, been to Amsterdam (didn't inhale), watched friends night time skinny dipping in Corfu Greece (still am at a loss why I didn't join in), dated a swimsuit model and a girl who owned a liquor store (no lies), been best man at my brothers wedding and twice so far for John (one of my best friends), helped run the 46' MotorSail boat Camelot up the East Coast with my buddy Larry (another of my best friends... RIP), slept comfortably on a sinking boat, bailed water with a 5 gallon bucket in the middle of the Gulf Stream 45 miles from shore on a different sinking boat, and got kicked out of a bar in Daytona on Christmas Eve for getting sick.
I've also seen many concerts throughout the years...
Concerts I would like to see... Led Zeppelin (Page & Plant), Van Halen (with DLR), Santana, The Cult, a couple Blues acts, and a couple '80s hair bands.
Throughout it all I've done some dumb things I regret and some I don't. I'm not fond of a few of my exploits but man I've had fun for the most part! I've had many great friends along for the adventures and they occasionally remind me of something I forgot or something I've exaggerated. Since I've forgot more than I remember about most of my adventures, if I think of anything to add I'll update this page.
My original plan was to only be back in Ohio for a few years, but as of now it's been 20. That's way too long to be away from the sea so I'm planning on getting back to someplace much farther South again soon, even if it's only part time.
I'm not sure what will happen next, but I'm sure it will be an adventure!
In those days I also helped out with a Sea Doo & Jetboat rental business there too. A few years later, the city of Key West bought then proceeded to destroy (I believe they called it renovate) the street and harbor for 6 months, effectively killing any small businesses located there. The rental operation ended up going out of business due to lack of planning ahead for the "rainy days". After that, I basically goofed off for a year or two down there. Eventually I was approached by a guy I had met there who had also started a Sea Doo Rental and Tour business at one of the largest Resort Motels in Key West. He asked me if I could help him out by being a tour guide and part time mechanic for his 18+ Sea Doo fleet. I couldn't turn that offer down. I helped him out for a short time fixing skis and guiding tours around Key West. It never did pay much in tips, but kept me on the water and in great shape!
In about 2005, I started dating a Honduran girl (Ana) who worked at the resort. Out of that relationship, we had a daughter. In the mean time, Brian and I drifted apart and without Honduras and the islands, I ended up back home again and bored.
What I've done so far...
Journey, Rush, Ozzy, Dio, Black Sabbath (with Ozzy), Queensryche, Van Halen (Sammy), Jimmy Buffett (quite a few times), The Coral Reefer Band (without Jimmy at Blue Heaven, KW), 38 Special, Molly Hatchet, Rod Stewart, Metallica, The Scorpions, Metal Church, David Lee Roth, David Lee Roth & Sammy Hagar, Bad Company (several times), Ziggy Marley & The Wailers, Queen (with Paul Rodgers), Trans Siberian Orchestra, Judas Priest, AC/DC, Ratt, Styx, Warrant, Firehouse, Quiet Riot, Whitesnake, Bullet Boys, Kansas, Creed, REO Speedwagon, Ted Nugent, Bob Seger, Pink Floyd (at OSU), Heaven & Hell (Black Sabbath with DIO), Aerosmith, KISS, Foreigner, Loverboy, Def Leppard, Kenny Chesney (love my NSR!), Eric Moore & The Godz, and The Sauce Boss (www.sauceboss.com). There's probably quite a few others I forgot as well, not to mention the really blurry weekends back in the '80s at the Party House in Mansfield, Ohio where I saw many great local bands like The Godz, Rosie (the band Mark Chatfield was in before joining Bob Seger), Osiris, Rated-X, Street Foxx, Tone X, Prowler, Corsair, and many others from what I'm told (as I said, those days are pretty fuzzy now). I sure wish I owned a video camera back then!