Lots of people have asked me about the name--where did it come from? I really like an author named Jack Kerouac. In fact, my dog is named after him--Kerouac. So, when it came to naming my boat, I wanted a connection. My favorite Jack Kerouac book is "The Dharma Bums." I dropped the "The" and removed and "s" off the end, and had "Dharma Bum." I liked the sound of it and so, after following the proper "de-naming ceremony" named her.

I raced her in C fleet on the Magothy River and in PHRF C/D on the Chesapeake Bay. We raced 20-some races a year on the Magothy and another 10 or so on the Bay--about 30 or so races a year, including a few races against other Catalina 27s in one design. Dharma Bum proved she could race with the big boys on the bay with a little TLC and some upgrades.

The first major upgrade was her bottom. After years of spending her summers with a thick coating of cruising bottom paint, I stripped her down to the gel coat, put a new barrier coat on her, then a faster, harder, racing bottom. The next year saw a new main, the next a new genoa, and so on.

I'm pretty happy with how we've done on Dharma Bum. We consistently came in mid-fleet up until 2004 when we really started to get her moving. We came in 6th of 25, 7th of 30, etc., until we hit the jackpot. We took first place out of 10 boats in the Sail for Sight race in 2004.

In 2005, I realized I was ready to move on. I was ready for a bigger boat. Time to start looking to the future and the ocean calls. So, in July 2005 I bought a C&C 34 and named her Japhy's Spirit. But, that's another story...