We drove 600 miles to have our first look at the 2007 Catalina 350 that we would name Reflection
We’re Harold and Marcia. Harold had his first brush with sailing on Barton Pond, near Ann Arbor, MI. He and two other mates would put in their one-person rubber rafts upstream on the Huron River. Floating down the river, they would come to wider part of the river (Barton Pond) and have to paddle the length of the pond without a current. Innovation struck with the adoption of the plastic dropcloth as spinnaker. Towards the end of high school, Harold would canoe on the Huron, most often at night. In college, Harold needed a P.E. credit and chose a sailing class. He was hooked.
Marcia came along in 1981, and joined Harold on the late-night canoe trips. They would marry in May of 1982, and live on Lake Copneconic in Oakland County. With $600 from their wedding gifts, they bought their first sailboat, an AMF Sunfish. They were both sailors now.
In time, they raised two children. The family trailered that Sunfish to Michigan State Parks, and into Canada and New York. While the Sunfish is ideally suited to one person, two adults and two growing children meant the Sunfish was over capacity.
They saved up $5000 to remodel their kitchen with new cabinets, but just before they committed to cabinets, there was a chance encounter. On a bridge over the Red Cedar River, on MSU’s campus, Harold met a colleague, Eric, who was selling his 1976 Cal-2-27. Harold called Marcia and asked her, ‘Do you want to buy a sailboat?’ Well, the cabinet money became the down payment and a week later Marcia and Harold owned the boat they would own for twenty-three years. It’s name is Arcturus and it has been passed along to new owners in 2023.
The 2007 Catalina 350 was purchased in the winter of 2023, after Marcia sold the farm she inherited. Marcia had a list of things that Marcia and Harold would want in their next boat, the one that they could grow old upon. In January 2023, Marcia would find a listing that ticked almost every box. At the end of May 2023, they drove to Manitowoc, WI where the Catalina had been trucked. They, along with their dear friend Mary, would perform the re-naming ceremony, and the boat was named Reflection. Their first couple of sails were just off of Manitowoc, and then they sailed to their homeport of Muskegon, MI.