“Wondrously Strange,” Our Crossing to the Marquesas

Tags

Journal writing, memoir, ocean passages, sailing, Sailing Around the World, travel, writing

 

 

I was reading from some of my old sailing journals when I came across this entry. It captures so perfectly what it was like to be crossing oceans in a small sailboat with young children, that “wondrously strange” brew of the ordinary and extraordinary mixed together.

The photo is of our landfall at Nuka Hiva in the Marquesas Islands after a 28-day crossing from Mexico. But in the middle of the voyage we had no idea how long it would take or even if we would ever reach the islands. The fact that that mist shrouded green gem rose from the sea exactly where we thought it should rise seemed a miracle.

May 1, 1986,   11° N 123° 40′ W Pacific Ocean

We are flying wing to wing at 6 1/2 knots toward the Marquesas, at last. We’ve been at sea 16 days, since April 16, and are not yet to the half-way mark. Out of 2800 miles we still have 1560 to go.

So far our crossing has been better (physically and mentally) than I imagined. We were all a little sea-sick our 2nd and 3rd day out but have been fine since. We try to live one day at a time (always a good idea) and not think about how long it might take us to reach our destination–especially now when a 40 day crossing seems likely.

Our worst days (and nights) have been during the two rain storms we’ve had so far. The dampness and clamminess of everything is disheartening, and the black, wet night watches uncomfortable. The constant roll and pitch of the boat make the simplest task arduous. Brewing tea can become a chore of maddening dexterity and frustration.

And yet in other ways, life goes on uninterrupted, unperturbed, as if we were still at anchor in San Carlos. Sometimes I sit cuddled with Dale in the dark cockpit surrounded by a stream of sea and stars and marvel at the children’s voices drifting up from the galley, their light banter as they do their nightly dishes amid a dim circle of light. The only light in a thousand miles of darkness.

Then it strikes me as wondrously strange, our few feet of ordinary human activity adrift upon an endless indifferent sea beneath an ocean of stars.

Other sailing epiphanies you might enjoy

Water with a Razor’s Edge

The glassy surface of the ocean rose up creating a razor-sharp edge as it continuously slipped along beside us, like a wave that never breaks.  Watching it, I thought, I never want to be anywhere but here. And, I never want to lose this. I sought to etch it in my mind so it would always be part of me.

La Gitana – Our Larger Self, Sea Saga, Part V

She seemed almost as alive to us as the other creatures that she cavorted with, the dolphins that played at her side, the whales that swam beneath and circled her, the flying fish that landed on her decks. Her spirit was all her own. But her breath, her pulse, her beating heart, her life blood, was us, the people who inhabited and cared for her, plotted her course, walked her decks, stroked her beams, and dreamed her dreams.

 

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Sailing with Kids into the Unknown, Continuation of Sea Saga, Part VI

Tags

adventure, Baja, children, Cruising (maritime), Formosa 46, lifestyle, memoir, Mexico, sailing, Sailing Around the World

This post is a continuation of the article I wrote about long-distance sailing with children that I wrote long ago as we embarked upon what would be a 6 ½ year voyage around the world. Read Part I, HERE.

Cruising with Kids, Dream or Nightmare?  Part Two

So amid tears and protests, we moved aboard “La Gitana” where she lay patiently at her slip in Ventura, California. There Dale and I gave up the roomy aft cabin to the children with their collections of stuffed animals, Barbie dolls and Star War Empires. Then we settled back to await the inevitable bouts of tears and sulkiness that must accompany this new adjustment period in our lives.

But it never happened. Chris was too busy learning to sail our dinghy, while Kelli was totally enchanted with her new, tiny inflatable and happily rowing off backwards to visit new-found friends living at the marina.

Soon surfing and boogie boarding became the favored past-time, and the children were heaving boards to heads and going off to explore the waves together.

By the time January and our much delayed departure date rolled around, the children had made new lives and new friends for themselves at the marina. But there were no tears at departing this time–they were as ready to head out as we were.

Already they had learned that they could adapt to a new environment and make their own places in it, wherever that place might be.This easy acceptance of and adjustment to the cruising life continued. We spent two delightful weeks at Catalina Island before heading further south.

Even in that short time, the children’s sense of independence and self-reliance increased as they rowed themselves ashore each day to explore the little town of Avalon by themselves or took their places at the fishing dock among all the old-timers there.

Chris became so adept at working the oars of our ten-foot dingy that he became the family’s official rower. Whenever the four of us went to shore together, it was his strong back and broad smile that transported us there.

I’ll never forget one twilit evening when Kelli offered to row the trash ashore, and, despite my doubts, Dale said she could handle it. I watched, trans-fixed, as my little eight-year-old daughter heft the large bag into our ten-foot dingy, untied the painter and shoved off, manning the heavy wooden oars that I myself had trouble with. She rowed, not backwards this time, but like a good seaman with her back to the future as the gathering twilight slowly hid her from view. Kelli won more than a bit of independence that day–she won respect and admiration, for she rowed a straighter course than I could.

By the time we reached Cabo San Lucas and rounded the tip of Baja into the Sea of Cortez, we had discovered that many of the more trivial concerns that, nonetheless, loomed so large in our minds had disappeared. Now it’s hard to imagine why we once thought that lack of privacy or cramped quarters would become a problem.

Our forty-six foot Formosa with its large center cockpit and forward and aft cabins has provided us with all the privacy and living space that we seem to need. We live as peaceably here as we did in our house and perhaps more so. Not only are our cramped quarters not a problem, but they have often proved a blessing.

Now when the children bring the Legos out to the salon table to build spaceships, Dale or I are often drawn into the creative enterprise. And it is easy to supervise school lessons from the galley while in the midst of kneading sourdough or canning chicken. Then, when we do need that time to “be by ourselves,” we’ve found that cooperation rather than space is the prime factor. And cooperation is readily available. Why we once thought otherwise seems a mystery now.

The simple luxuries of a daily shower, a washing machine and TV are no longer missed. While the privacy of a good, hot shower is still a luxury that we would readily welcome, we’ve found that it’s only just that–a luxury, not a necessity. Its absence does not affect the quality of life or well-being in the least.

Fresh water sponge baths and sea-bucket showers are enough to keep us feeling as fresh and clean as the humidity permits. Then, when we are in a port where fresh water is plentiful, nothing compares with a fresh-water sun shower during the heat of day or within the warm caress of a starry night.

I’ve discovered that washing laundry in buckets of salt water and rinsing them in fresh keeps our clothes as clean and soft as they need to be. It is not the drudgery that I had anticipated. At the house, doing laundry for me was always a rather tedious task performed alone in the semi-gloom of our garage. Now I do the laundry in a bikini on the bow of the boat with the brilliant sunshine and wind refreshing my spirits while panoramic views of busy harbors or lovely anchorages enchant my mind. And never am I a lone. There is always Chris to haul up buckets of water for me, Dale to help rinse and wring, and Kelli to hang the clothes on the life lines.

The absence of TV has been one of our greatest blessings. It opened the fascinating world of books to our children who, until we began cruising, seldom read. We were only a week into our cruise when Chris, quickly drying the last of the dishes so I could begin our nightly reading session of The Hobbit, exclaimed, “This beats watching TV any day!” And this from a boy who had suffered the cruelest deprivation of his life only months before when we cut the cable to MTV.

Since we’ve been cruising, I’ve ceased to worry about depriving the children of their involvement in organized sports and clubs. We’ve found that this life at sea provides ample opportunities for developing skills, independence and self-reliance that more than compensate for that lack. These cruising activities seem to be more holistic in scope, as well, encompassing many aspects of a single theme.

Fishing, for example, has become a favored past-time for the children, but this passion involves far more than casting a line into the sea. Each child catches and salts down his own bait, rigs and cares for his own poles, then cleans and fillets his own catch. They both spend many enjoyable hours making lures out of feathers, bits of colored string, and other odds and ends.

Chris, especially, actively seeks out and devours any articles or books on the sport of fishing that he can find, and he spends hours pouring through our charts and cruising guides, looking for the best fishing and diving spots.

Our fish identification book has been worn to tatters by constant perusal. Now, when I am puzzled by the identity of an unfamiliar fish, I have only to describe it to the kids to find my answer. Even the children’s artwork nowadays includes many finely detailed and colored drawings of the fish they admire.

In cruising, we’ve found that many of the skills that the children learn provide as much practical use as they do play, Rowing, sailing, and working the out¬board motor are not only fun but are the children’s main means of transportation to and from shore. Swimming, snorkeling, and diving provide excellent recreation as well as dinner.

Chris has become quite proficient at hunting and spearing fish and lobster, often free-diving to thirty feet to stalk a grouper or free an anchor. Kelli’s snorkeling and diving produces clams and scallops for supper, as well as a myriad of pretty shells for creating jewelry.

A cruising life does provide less opportunity for the children to play with their own peers, but even this lack does have its compensations. The children have been forced to seek companionship in unexpected places, including each other. Their many expeditions to shore to explore the beaches and towns together has fostered a growing sense of responsibility, cooperation, protectiveness and con¬sideration between the two. It is often commented on how close they seem to be–comments rarely merited in the highly separate lives they led ashore.

In addition, both children have become quite adept at striking up friendships with many of the adults they meet. These adults have included not only other cruisers or vacationing Americans, but many of the local Mexicans as well. Some of these friendships have become very special .and lasting, while others have led to some unique experiences.

The children’s increasing command of Spanish has allowed them to become friends with some of the Mexican shopkeepers and fishermen and their children. In the process, the children have waited on tables, made signs in English, and helped out their friends in other small ways, as well as enjoyed several tours of local commercial fishing boats. One special friendship with a young American couple working down here led Chris to work and pay for his own diving instructions, allowing him to become a certified scuba diver at the age of twelve.

When the children do happen to come into contact with other cruising children, these friendships tend to be swift and deep, bonded as they are by their shared, unique experiences. They are learning that friendships need not be limited to one’s own peer group or even to one’s own nationality but are to be nurtured and savored wherever they are found.

One of the very special aspects of cruising has been the increased opportunities it provides for children and parents to play together. The few bouts with boredom aboard our boat have only led to the discovery and sometimes rediscovery of enjoyable pursuits. I’ve discovered the joys of sewing, an activity I had formerly shunned, when Kelli and I began to design and hand-sew doll’s clothes. Dale, after a lifetime of avoiding most board games and cards of any sort, now enthusiastically plays both with his family. The children’s love of drawing has caused me to rediscover my own love for it and Dale to discover it for the first time. Most notable, I believe, is the rediscovery of the child within the adult, as Dale and I find an increasing sense of whimsy and nonsense pervading “La Gitana.”

It is not only the play and pleasures, however, that are shared aboard a cruising boat, but the work, the responsibilities, and the learning as well. Aboard “La Gitana,” all the water and fuel hauling, the grocery shopping, the laundering and cooking, mending and sewing, and the bottom cleaning are joint activities, shared by all to some degree. Chris and Kelli are a great help when it comes to sailing the boat. They handle much of the foredeck work as well as much of the anchoring now.

School, however, is our most challenging responsibility. I have been very pleased with the quality and content of the Calvert correspondence lessons, but it has taken some time for all of us to adjust to the children-as-pupils and mother-as-teacher relationship. Having taught school a bit in the past, I had no qualms about teaching my own children. However, I have since discovered that there is an emotional bond, or perhaps tension, between mothers and their children that does not exist in the normal classroom and does not facilitate the learning process.

It seems to make the goofing off and the squabbling, the stricter expectations and shorter tempers all the more prevalent. The children somehow feel much freer to criticize their own mother’s teaching standards and techniques than they ever did their former teachers. I, in turn, find my own children’s sloppy work habits and inattentiveness much more exasperating than I did with my former students. Even normal shipboard activities seem to confound our best efforts as Dale tears apart the salon looking for some tool while working on one of his own projects, or friendly neighbors row by for a chat. Underway there is always a herd of dolphin, a caught fish or a call to tack to upset our lessons. And yet, I keep reminding myself, isn’t this what we imagined maritime cruising to be all about–pitting ourselves against the unknown challenges in the world, in each other, and in ourselves, grappling with it and coming out the better?

And so, we’ve grappled with our schooling these past two years, and, in fact, have seemed to come out the better for it. School is now a much more orderly process. The disruptions still occur, but we’re learning when to be firm and when to be flexible. The children are learning to accept my higher standards, and I am learning to handle the highs and lows of teaching them with more equilibrium.

The satisfaction of personally supervising their studies and watching each child struggle with and acquire new skills and concepts now outweighs the moments of temper and frustration. Dale and I feel, more than ever, that the children are receiving a better, more comprehensive, more individualized education than they ever would have received ashore. And, in the process, our own basic education is getting a thorough review. It’s a learning experience shared by all.

We have been cruising aboard “La Gitana” for over two years now, and not one of us would trade this life for our life ashore. Not all of it has been pleasant. I haven’t mentioned the time our drinking water turned a gunky brown and all of us were sick flat on our backs for a week, or the time I heard a bump in the night and looked out the porthole to see a huge shrimper looming over our bow, or the time I set the kids’ bunk cushions ablaze while trying to dry them with the portable heater.

Then there was the time I dropped the thermometer and the mercury rolled into the 45 gallon water tank that Dale had just cleaned and refilled, and the time our kitten swallowed some bait attached to a fish-hook, and in her excitement jumped overboard and had to be reeled in on the pole. And there have been other times like these, including the common drudgery of hauling water, cleaning fuel tanks and scraping the boat’s bottom. But what life is without these “times”?

To me, one of the magical things about cruising is this meshing of the ordinary with the extraordinary, the dreadful with the delightful. This life, we’ve discovered, is not an extended vacation, an action-packed adventure, nor an escape from reality.

It’s neither dream nor nightmare but simply a way of life—of living from day to day—that we find very satisfying. All of the doubts that plagued me before our cruise began have now been thoroughly tested and dispelled–at least for the time being. I’ve learned that this cruising life can be all the things that we dreamed it to be, and more, and sometimes less. In fact, it’s a wonderful life; but this one, like any other, has its great unknown–and that’s the magic of it.

MORE POSTS ON OUR SEA SAGA

Sea Saga, Part I – Catching the Dream

Sea Saga, Part II – Honeymoon Sail Bailing Water

Sea Saga, Part III – First Stop in Paradise, the Virgin Islands

Sea Saga, Part IV – Ex-pats and Pirates in the Bay Islands of Honduras

Sea Saga, Part V – La Gitana, Our Larger Self

Sea Saga, Part VI – Cruising with Kids, Dream or Nightmare? (Part One)

Sea Saga, Part VI — Cruising with Kids, Dream or Nightmare?

Tags

adventure, children, Cruising (maritime), Dreams Come True, life-style, memoir, sailing, Sailing Around the World

The following is an article published in Latitude 38 many years ago. I’m reprinting it here as part of our Sea Saga series, about our six and a half year circumnavigation aboard our sailboat. The article will be posted in two parts. This is the first.

Cruising with Kids–Dream or Nightmare? Part One

It was the last day of our garage sale and I was happily breezing through the house directing potential buyers to the last of the hanging plants and picture frames. Within the week we would be moved aboard “La Gitana,” our 46-foot Formosa, preparing her for our long-awaited cruise into Mexico and the South Pacific. I was so excited by the prospect that I almost didn’t notice Kelli, our eight-year-old daughter, when she came into the family room and stood staring at the empty walls as if stunned
.
“I thought it was only a dream!” she cried, then burst into tears.

It was “only a dream”–a dream-come-true for Dale and me. But for our children, it may have seemed more of a nightmare as they watched the bits and pieces of their lives being hauled away by strangers.

A year of patiently hand-feeding them tales of sailing off to tropical isles where they could swim, snorkel, and fish every day was rapidly losing its influence. When tasted with the very bitter sacrifices that were being required of them, such tales did not seem so sweet.

Our decision to go cruising had not been a sudden one. The idea had been playing in the backs of our minds since we were first married. We decided then that “someday” when the children were the “right” ages, when we were financially able to leave on an open-ended cruise without the need of returning to a work-day world any time soon, we would leave for the South Pacific. Ultimately, our dream was to sail around the world.

But it took an idyllic bareboat charter in the Caribbean some ten years later to finally budge that dream into reality. We realized that our children, then seven and ten, were the perfect ages for living aboard a boat. And with a little reshuffling of the financial deck and a lot of belt-tightening, we could just about squeeze by on that open-ended clause.

After all, if we didn’t go now, when would we? We could wait until the children were grown, but how could we deprive them of such an adventure? And who could wait that long anyway?

Dale and I spent many happy hours convincing ourselves that what we would be offering the children in a life at sea would more than compensate for the things that they would be giving up. We thought of the wonderful experience of traveling, the great cultural and environmental education, the challenges and opportunities for self-development. It all sounded so good, so true, and yet, a perverse thought kept plaguing me: Was it perhaps “too good to be true”? I began to consider the darker side of life at sea.

Simply moving aboard a boat and sailing off into the world was going to require some drastic changes in lifestyle quite apart from the obvious benefits. The mere logistics of gathering the four corners of our large house and fitting it within the space the size of our family room alone required some creative mental maneuvering. Trying to envision some semblance of tranquility and order within such a jumble seemed beyond the stretch of my imagination.

Could the four of us truly be happy living together in such close quarters? Wouldn’t the lack of space and privacy release hidden demons within us that would turn our cruising dream into a nightmare?

Even simple luxuries took on new ominous dimensions as I tried to mentally delete them from the frugal lifestyle we were contemplating. While it seemed we ought to be able to live happily ever after without the benefits of hot showers, a cold fridge, a washing machine and TV–what if we couldn’t? Who knew what trivial monkey-wrench could throw the whole dream askew?

One of my secret fears was that we might all become extremely bored with our cruising life. I tried imagining day after day, week after week of nothing but bright skies, warm seas and white sand, and found the effort becoming tedious.

After all, just how much swimming, fishing and snorkeling could one endure? Even heaven could become tedious after a while—couldn’t it?

Most of our worries centered on the children. Chief among these, and certainly the one most on the minds of the grandparents, was the question of safety. Were Dale and I being irresponsible in taking the kids off into the unknown danger that seemed integral in such long-distance cruising? Who knew what deadly storms or hurricanes, shark and appendicitis attacks, pirates or revolutionaries we would be exposing them to?

Then there were their social lives to consider. Our children never seemed so happy as when they had hordes of kids to play with. Surely it was grossly unfair of us to deprive them of their peers and of the opportunities and enjoyment that organized sports and recreations offered. Often, I would find myself closely watching my two children as they moved about their daily activities–the very activities of which we would soon be depriving them.

Christopher, at eleven, was fully enmeshed in that preadolescent social scene of soccer and baseball, skate boarding and video-games. It was a life-style in which he felt quite comfortable, and even while Dale and I felt that the life we were offering him was better, the question remained: Would he think so, say ten years down the line? Or would he feel cheated of the normal activities of adolescence?

At eight years old, Kelli’s life was so much simpler, and yet such simplicity seemed all the more wretched to deprive her: doll houses and baby cribs, roller skates and her first two-wheel bike, gymnastic classes and tap dance lessons. Was she a budding ballerina whose career was being cut to the quick? What other new talents and skills would be left unplumbed as we dragged her away from future softball games, piano lessons and Girl Scout activities? Really, just how much were we truly asking our children to give up in order to accommodate our dream?

With Kelli’s tears that bright June morning, all of these questions and doubts came bubbling back to the surface, bringing into sharp focus our quandary: would this cruising life that Dale and I so clearly envisioned reach in reality the expectation of our dreams; or would it fray somehow and wear thin under the wear and tear of everyday living, dissolving into the nightmare our children half-expected?

The trouble was that we would never know until we had lived it. And to Dale and me, regardless the outcome, this life we so clearly envisioned seemed worth the effort and the risk. We had this singular opportunity to draw together as a family and pit our strengths, our skills, and our spirits against an unknown life and, just perhaps, come out the better for it. It was a chance we could not pass up.

(To Be Continued) Read part Two HERE:

https://deborahbrasket.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/sailing-with-kids-into-the-unknown-continuation-of-sea-saga-part-vi/

MORE POSTS ON OUR SEA SAGA

Sea Saga, Part I – Catching the Dream

Sea Saga, Part II – Honeymoon Sail Bailing Water

Sea Saga, Part III – First Stop in Paradise, the Virgin Islands

Sea Saga, Part IV – Ex-pats and Pirates in the Bay Islands of Honduras

Sea Saga, Part V – La Gitana, Our Larger Self

La Gitana, Our Larger Self – Sea Saga, Part V

Tags

adventure, Boat, circumnavigation, Dreams Come True, Gypsy, La Gitana, lifestyle, live-aboard, Sail, sailboat, sailing, Sailing Around the World, traveling, Yacht

We named her “La Gitana,” Spanish for the gypsy, partly in tribute to our family’s Spanish heritage, partly because sea gypsies are what we would be once we moved aboard her and sailed away, partly for my long fascination with everything pertaining to Gypsies.

I loved the music, the dancing, the clothing, the jewelry, the colorful furnishings of the caravans. I loved what they stood for, the capriciousness of their existence living on the edge of society, their adventuresome spirit, their playfulness and spontaneity, their wildness—all the things we grew up thinking of as gypsy-like. La Gitana symbolized all of that for us. We feminized the masculine gitano and added the lyrical signifier “la” for alliteration, and to show her singular importance. The, not a.

Of course she had to be feminine—all ships traditionally are. They are vessels that serve us, that carry us in her belly, under her wings. Her sails are softly rounded breasts bravely and proudly pulling us onward. And she was alive! So lively with a personality and purpose all her own—a creature, not a thing.

She seemed almost as alive to us as the other creatures that she cavorted with, the dolphins that played at her side, the whales that swam beneath and circled her, the flying fish that landed on her decks. Her spirit was all her own. But her breath, her pulse, her beating heart, her life blood, was us, the people who inhabited and cared for her, plotted her course, walked her decks, stroked her beams, and dreamed her dreams.

It was a symbiotic relationship. We trusted her and sank everything we had into her. And she depended upon us to steer her away from the harbor and allow her to run with the wind, to lead her to a safe haven and hunker her down when the hurricane blew.
Originally she was called “Swagman,” which is what peddlers and tinkers are called Down Under. We bought her from an Aussie living in San Diego who had commissioned her to be built in Taiwan—a Formosa 46, a 46-foot Peterson designed cutter rigged sloop with a center-cockpit. Cousin to the better known and more costly Peterson 44.

We had invested so much more than money in her—our hopes and dreams, our safety and security, our hearth and home, our larger selves. She is what separated us from the sea on those long ocean voyages and moved us through the air by harnessing the wind. Deep in her belly she rocked and sung us to sleep. When the storms rose she sheltered us from the rain. When huge rogue waves came crashing down she lifted us up. When the wind died away and left us floundering in the middle of nowhere, she was the still center in a circle of blue.

I cannot tell you the pleasure and affection I felt when we were ashore and looked out at her waiting patiently for our return. What it felt like to bring our dinghy aside her and hoist our provisions aboard. The thrill of weighing anchor and heading out to sea, raising her sails, watching them fill.

Hunkered beneath her dodger during night watches, I listened to the rush of waves and sails in the black, black night, and watched her mast stirring stars. Sleeping below deck as she rocked with the waves, her rigging humming overhead, the soft gurgle of the ocean whispering through the hull, was sweetness like no other.

I loved sunning my chilled skin on her warm teak decks after a long morning hunting and diving for scallops. Falling asleep in the cockpit on balmy days in port, watching the stars gently rock overhead as she rolled with the soft swells.

How I miss her! But we carry her in our hearts and in our memories, in the words on these pages, and the novels I am writing. I like to think another family has taken over where we left off, hugging her close, and steering her on new adventures.

La Gitana—my larger self.

MORE POSTS ON OUR SEA SAGA

Sea Saga, Part I – Catching the Dream

Sea Saga, Part II – Honeymoon Sail Bailing Water

Sea Saga, Part III – First Stop in Paradise, the Virgin Islands

Sea Saga, Part IV – Ex-pats and Pirates in the Bay Islands of Honduras

Sea Saga, Part II – Honeymoon Sail Bailing Water

Tags

adventure, Dreams Come True, lifestyle, sailing, Sailing Around the World

[Click Here for Part I – Catching the Dream]

We married on the fly. I had no wedding gown, no ring, no cake. No one thought to bring a camera. Our parents were given an hour’s notice to meet us at the altar. I’m still amazed the minister agreed to tie the knot on such late notice. We were married standing beneath a giant heart covered in roses in a chapel decorated for another couple’s wedding.

We drove off to Santa Barbara later that afternoon to spend our wedding night with our best friends, Steve and Kathy. They graciously gave up their bed to us, a mattress on their bedroom floor, and slept on the couch that night.

The next morning we rented a 10-foot sailing dingy and headed off toward the oil rigs in the channel, even though storm warning flags were flying. No one knew how to sail, but how hard could it be?

We made it half way to the oil rigs before the steadily building waves started swamping the boat. Kathy and I frantically bailed water with our straw sun hats while the guys managed to get the outboard engine started and the boat turned around. We finally made it to shore, wet and cold with ruined hats, but undaunted by the adventure.

That afternoon we headed south to find an apartment while Dale looked for work. Meanwhile I enrolled myself in the local high school. Although I had already turned 18, I was still two months shy of a diploma when we eloped. I lasted about a week at the new school, and then enrolled myself in a community college. By the time I finally took the courses needed to get my long-delayed High School diploma, I’d already earned a BA in English.

A retired Port Captain at Long Beach Harbor eventually taught us to sail.

Not long afterward we moved back to the Central Coast where we bought a small sloop that we launched and sailed at Lake Lopez, Morro Bay, and Santa Barbara.

Our next boat was a Columbia 26 named Dulcinea. 

We kept her at a slip in Santa Barbara, spending long sunny weekends aboard with the kids and cruising along the coast and to the Channel Islands.

Even so, it wasn’t until we took a bareboat charter in the Virgin Islands and later the same year to the Bay Islands off Honduras that we knew for sure we could do this—live this way fulltime, sailing from one island to another . . . forever.

Our dream of sailing around the world was reborn.

Stay tuned for Part III of our Sailing Saga: Chartering in the Caribbean

Sea Saga, Part I – Catching the Dream

Tags

Dreams Come True, First Love, sailing, Sailing Around the World

The wildest, bravest, and most romantic thing I’ve ever done was to fully embrace my boyfriend’s dream of sailing around the world and make it my own.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s why I married him.

I was already falling in love at this point and the thought of sailing around the world with him someday pushed me over the edge.

But there was more to the sailing dream than that. I’d always been fascinated by the ocean and as a girl I loved reading books about kids who grew up around boats. I loved films about high-sea adventures and swash-buckling sailors. I was wild about pirates.

In a Junior High Home Ec class, we had to put together an album about our future lives, and mine featured a long, elegant yacht. When I showed my mom she declared, “You’ll never be a sailor—you’re far too lazy.” (Yah for moms with dire predictions you can rebel against!)

But I can see why she said that. I was a dreamer, not a doer. I’d rather read than go swimming. I gave up trying to surf because it was too exhausting (and cold!) getting the board past the breakers. To be fair, it was just me and a girlfriend winging it. I had no wet suit, it was winter, and the board was ten feet long. (To be even fairer, she learned to surf.)

So when I met this handsome, adventurous man who was a doer and dreamed of sailing around the world, I fell hard, all the way.

Dale was already a man of the world at age 21, a Viet Nam vet. He’d enlisted because he wanted to go to sea. He tried joining the Navy but they wanted a 4-year commitment and he was a man in a hurry, so he went next door and joined the Marines. You know–Marines—the sea—right? Clearly he hadn’t thought this through, but risky behavior was in his blood. His dad was a bull rider before becoming a high steel worker, and later a mountain climber.

By the time we met, Dale was racing off-road vehicles in the Baja 500, and earning a living walking high steel beams like his dad. He drove a Porsche. He had a mustache and sideburns. He looked like a pirate.

I was still a senior in high school. I wore pigtails and sang in the choir. I drove my grandpa’s old Rambler.

He was the opposite of everything me. Exactly what I was looking for.

Twelve years passed before we sailed away together and saw our dream come true. But by then I was largely the driver of the dream. Dale had become the responsible adult. He thought we should put our dream on hold until our two kids were grown. I said no way. I’d waited long enough. I’d never had the chance to grow up around boats, but by golly our kids would.

MORE POSTS ON OUR SEA SAGA

Sea Saga, Part I – Catching the Dream

Sea Saga, Part II – Honeymoon Sail Bailing Water

Sea Saga, Part III – First Stop in Paradise, the Virgin Islands

Sea Saga, Part IV – Ex-pats and Pirates in the Bay Islands of Honduras

Sea Saga, Part V – La Gitana, Our Larger Self

Sea Saga, Part VI – Cruising with Kids, Dream or Nightmare? (Part One)

Sea Saga, Part VI – Sailing with Kids Into the Unknown (Part Two)