Welcome to The Urban Skipper

My first foray at a website came when I was in college during the late 1990s. The university provided each student with an email account (new to many back then) hosted on a Sun Solaris UNIX server which had the ability to publish basic HTML web pages. I took the opportunity to teach myself how to build static web pages and before too long I created an online resume and a makeshift online journal.

As I progressed through my studies, I’d publish thoughts, comments, and bits of profound college wisdom for all to see. Likely my site was largely ignored as blogging had not yet become a mainstream concept and Google Analytics was just a glimmer in a young programmers eye.

Fast forward several years and I’ve left college, moved to the big city, and gained employment as a high-end corporate IT consultant for a major telco. I reinvented the wheel with my self-coded online journal (still no blogs to speak of yet), purchased a domain name, and found myself ranked in search engines. My site was hosted off my own personal server kept in my bedroom closet (yes, I was that kind of tech nerd) and saw a descent amount of traffic for a 22-year old nobody. The vast majority of that traffic came from friends wanting photos of our events. Again, Facebook had yet to be invented.

My hobby waned as I progress through my 20s and the bug for tech has all but lapsed with this IT consultant. Professionally, I’m still in the industry and founded a Managed Services company specializing in small business clients. As the glitz and glamor of tech left my attention, it was clear that it needed to be replaced with something as there was only so much urban nightlife can do for a highly right-brained young man.

Since I was very young, I was attracted to the water. I grew up in a small northwest suburb of Chicago which was built around a moderately sized lake. We would visit the beach in the summer and I would find myself staring longingly at the small boats on the water. Occasionally, one of my parents would receive an invitation to a day on the lake in a pontoon and I would beg for the chance to join.

Upon moving to Chicago, I took every opportunity to spend time along the shore of Lake Michigan, again, watching the boats and dreaming of participating. It became clear to me that I must make yachting my new passion. It’s been several years since I began my quest (saga, really) through the boating community of Chicago. This blog serves as my record of past, present, and future tales of my journey from suburban techie to The Urban Skipper.