About Us | About the Name Dasein | About the Decision to Buy a Boat | About this Site

About Us

Nathan

I am a freelance graphic designer and photographer. I have a BA in philosophy from the University of Southern Maine. I began sailing when I was a sophomore in college in 1995 by fast talking my way into a summer job as crew on Palawan, a 58 foot aluminum charter sailboat in Portland. I had never been on a sailboat before, but the captain, Tom Woodruff, was remarkably patient. I ended up sailing with him full time for 3 summers, as well as delivering the boat from St. Thomas, USVI to Portland via Bermuda one spring. The rest, as they say, is history. Beyond sailing, my interests include alpine and telemark skiing, backpacking, songwriting, and drinking coffee.

Heather

Heather is currently attending law school at the University of Maine. She graduated from Middlebury College with a degree in political philosophy. Her previous sailing experience is limited to lake sailing on a Phantom, cruising with her parents aboard their Hans Christian 38 Lucky Bear, and occasional crewing on Palawan, however she grew up spending weekends exploring Casco Bay with her parents and sister in a small open lobster boat. Beyond boats, her interests include skiing, swimming, knitting, and out-debating her husband on topics ranging from politics to philosophy.

Gavin

Gavin is the newest addition to the family. Since he was born on August 21, 2003, he most certainly has not attended any schools. He has, however, already been sailing. In fact, his first time aboard a boat was at 8 days of age, with his first sail 2 days later. We expect him to be varnishing in time for the upcoming spring maintenance season. In addition to sailing, his interests include breasts, sleeping, and. . . well. . . let's just say that its a good thing we have a holding tank!

Bailey

Bailey is our dog. He's a Border Collie. He didn't graduate from anywhere. After all, border collies are notorious for their ADD. His sailing started aboard Lucky Bear, and he has done remarkably well adapting to our much smaller boat. In addition to sailing, his interests include hiking, chasing tennis balls, playing frisbee, and sleeping with the end of his tongue sticking out. And yes, of course he reads The New Republic . . . doesn't everybody?

About the Name Dasein

Pronouniation

Its like design only with a da- rather than a de-: 

Short

The self, actualized through the mode of being-in-the-world.

Long

Dasein is a term that comes from Martin Heidegger's text on ontological hermeneutics, Being and Time. In this text, Heidegger revisits the questions of being, and the meaning of being. He claims that not only do we not know what being means, but that if we ask 'what is being?' "we are unable to fix coneptually what that 'is' signifies. We do not even know the horizon in terms of which that meaning is to be grasped and fixed."

For Heidegger, 'being' can only be explicated through Dasein, which he defines as "an entity which . . . includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its being." Dasein is the self, which, by its nature, "understands itself in terms of existence." Dasein is aware of its own being, and that being is an issue for it; it raises the question of itself. Thus, for Heidegger, the only way to reach any ontological conclusions is through Dasein, since the very essence of Dasein is that which is sought--being, or existance.

The most important aspect of Dasein, is that its most basic state is that of being-in-the-world. The very thing which defines Dasein is phenomenological in nature, and it is through this being-in-the-world that being can become an issue for Dasein. Dasein "gets its ontological understanding of itself in the first instance from those entities which it itself is not but which it encounters 'within' its world, and from the Being which they possess."

This idea that the self understands itself as an existant self only through encountering other beings and objects, present-at-hand, and grounded in a phenomenological reality, seemed appropriate for a sailing vessel, and so, we chose the name Dasein.

If you want to know what the meaning of Being really is, I'm afraid you are on your own. Try Nietzsche or Aristotle, depending on your worldview!

About the Decision to Buy a Boat

This is our first boat. I have done a fair bit of sailing, having worked on a local charter sailboat, and have wanted my own boat for several years. I never really looked into buying a boat too closely though, dismissing boat ownership as too costly, and as something for "sometime in the future."

The Seed is Planted

During the summer of 2001, however, Heather had the opportunity to sail with a "friend of a friend" on his Catalina 25, here in Portland, and was amazed that a 26 year old law student could afford to own a boat. During that afternoon of sailing, she pressed him a bit and found out that the boat cost less than $5000. She was amazed that a boat could be had for so little.

She came home and told me the story, and said, maybe we should think about getting a boat in the spring.... After all, the cost was really less than we had originally imagined, and sailing is something that we both love. Additionally, we thought that if we added a boat to our lifestyle now, the expense would become part of our budget and if we were to have a child in the future, we would already be accustomed to the cost of the boat. If we waited until after a child was born, we would have a much harder time justifying the cost and building it into our lifestyle.

Classic Beauty

We talked about it some, and then decided that maybe we should start looking now, just to see what was out there, and to narrow our focus. Within a week or so, we had decided that the 22' and 25' boats didn't really seem to fit our needs. Heather: "I don't want to sleep on top of my sh*t. No porta-potties in the v-berth!" More seriously, we decided that it probably didn't make sense to get something like a Sea Sprite or Ensign, since we really wanted something that we could do relatively extensive coastal cruising with, and would likely end up selling an Ensign after one or two seasons.

Additionally, we wanted a boat that had a certain level af "classic beauty." Although there are many boats available that have more room below, or in the cockpit, or on deck, or what-have-you, we decided that space was not the over-riding concern. We wanted a classic-looking, and sea-worthy vessel. Eventually we settled on either a Bristol 27, a Cape Dory 27, or a Pearson Triton. As luck would have it, we stumbled upon Pegasus in the Yacht World listings just a couple of weeks later, and less than four weeks since that fateful sail; she was a bit out of the price range we had set, but she seemed to have alot of "plusses" and she was only 2 hours away. We decided, well, lets have a look, just to see what we might get if we spend a little bit more.... We took a bunch of pictures and returned home thinking "well, if she was about 4 or 5 thousand less...."

Events Conspire, A Triton is Purchased

A few days later we were spending the afternoon on Heather's parents' Hans Christian in Falmouth harbor and decided to scoot around the anchorage and take a peek at some of the boats. Well, we are blessed with 5 Tritons in Falmouth, and we happened to be admiring one (Valkyrie) when the owner popped his head out of the companionway and invited us aboard. As it turns out, he was just getting ready to set sail for the NETA rendezvous in Pemaquid. We decided to crash the NETA party.

We had a great time at the NETA event, met some great people and picked everyone's brain. Tim Lackey, of Glissando fame, and owner of Gulf of Maine Marine Surveyors agreed to perform a survey on Pegasus, if we decided to make an offer. Over the next week we looked at a couple more Tritons, and made a second visit to Pegasus armed with some additional knowledge gained at the NETA event. We decided to go ahead with the survey.

Tim's 30-page survey turned up some moisture in the deck, some movement of the mast beam, and a few other relatively minor things. Remember that comment about 4 or 5 thousand less? A good survey can get it for you! Between our original offer which was a couple thousand below the asking price, and the concessions we got from the seller based on the survey results, we did OK.

From the initial seed being planted on that sailing trip Heather took, till we took ownership of a Triton, about 8 weeks had passed.... so now, here we are! And much richer for it, if not in dollars, at least in happiness.

About This Site

This site began in early March 2002, inspired by the site of my friend Tim Lackey, and the wonderful documentation of his restoration of Glissando. Over the first winter and spring that Heather and I owned Dasein, Tim's site provided endless answers and inspiration. As spring approached, it occured to me that it might be nice to document my own boat in a similar way, both for myself, and in hopes that I might be able to provide just a bit of help to someone else.

Hosting

The site was originally hosted at my free webspace that came with my Earthlink dial-up account. It didn't take long to outgrow that 10 megabyte server space, however. In August of 2002, I had to make a move, and after a bit of research decided on iPowerWeb.com as a host. The price was right, and the service was more full-featured than I needed, but thought it would be nice to have the "room to grow" in the future. So on September 2, 2002, we moved to iPowerWeb and the domain name dasein668.com.

HTML

My original site was an extremely unsophisticated site that utilized frames and simple javascript rollover elements, but little else. I was still in the early learning stages, and had quite a bit of trouble really getting control over the layout of the site.

In the spring of 2003 I set about to redesign the site to be more aesthetically pleasing, user friendly, and rigidly controlled. I also was concerned with making the maintenence and updating of the site as simple and streamlined as possible. Unfortunately, the redesign still left alot to be desired.

As such, in the fall of 2004 we moved to version 3.0 of the site. This version is designed to conform to the World Wide Web Consortium standards and to be as accessible as possible using validated XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.0.

Hardware and Software

I have used a variety of software during the life of this site, including probably a half dozen diferent free/shareware HTML editors, and a couple different FTP programs. This has been made more confusing by the fact that about half of my publishing was done on a PC at home, and the other half was done on a Mac at the office.

In February of 2003 we got a Mac for me at home, and I have quickly settled in with just a few applications for web development. All photos and graphics are created with Adobe Photoshop 7.0 and optimized with Adobe ImageReady. For html authoring and web publishing, I am now using Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX.