Travelers with a Boating Problem.

The question is Sailor? or Traveler?

• Sailing - The fine art of getting wet and becoming ill, while going nowhere slowly at great expense.

• Travelling - To go from one place to another, a journey. 

The answer is ....

I have always been a gypsy soul; prone to wandering and unable to stay in one place for a long period of time.  Sailing only came into my life in the last 10 years, when I met my soul mate. (awwwww!) When we met I really had no idea how to sail or how the change of lifestyle would affect me.  He told me his dream of sailing through the Caribbean and living on a boat. We spent countless hours on Yachtworld.com looking for the perfect boat. (We are still looking by the way.) Well, that sounded right up my alley! Little did I know I would dry heave for an entire 8 hours while we slogged along at a painstakingly slow 6 knots on our first Bahamas shakedown sail. (I now know that 6 knots is actually a great speed, as long as your not ill.) Once the sun rose and that unmistakable cerulean blue water illuminated the sea before my eyes I knew my yakking was not in vain. As the dolphins breached and danced in our bow wake I thought to myself, “This is so worth the pain and embarrassment of seasickness.” Over the past 7 years of cruising we have been to over 15 different countries and seen too many cultures and landmarks to count. That my friend is living! 

Sailing is fun, but I could just as easily hop on a plane, train or in an automobile if my goal is simply getting there.  Not to mention sailing is still the most inexpensive way to travel considering the cost of fuel these days. I’m not sure I would sail around a lake or just go sailing every weekend just to “get out there”. I mean I didn’t do it before and living aboard doesn’t allow for very many “leisure sails”. To me, traveling is what boats were meant to do. I have often asked, “Why would anyone want to live on a boat that doesn’t travel?”  The cramped quarters, the lack of shower, refrigerator or air condition are all things that personally I have only gone without only as a compromise to the simple fact that I was living in paradise; even if it was temporary.

In our case this lifestyle is truly about the journey, learning and fixing and growing along the way. Ghosting along under a full moon with all the wind Gods shinning down on you can be magical.  And pulling into a new harbor with excited eyes that just soak up everything the island has to offer is what keeps me cruising. However, you can’t be in a hurry and you have to be ready to expect the unexpected.

Originally, sailing felt like vacation.  We sailed through the Eastern Caribbean stopping at every different island experiencing their cultures, food and landscapes. Yet in the back of our minds there was still a home to go back to; a King sized bed to long for, a walk in closet, a garage, a yard. So when the sun beat us down, when the leaks came through the cabin, when the bugs ate us alive we had something to dream about. Going home. But then, being home left us restless, we knew that we could never be content in one place for the rest of our lives. The search began for another boat. We sold the house and the cars and moved aboard full time. With nothing to look back at we were able to come to terms with our new home and our new lifestyle with wild abandon. We learned to adapt to the changes that come with leaving your homeland and entering  strange new countries with different values, foreign languages and unique foods.

Sailing, like we see in the movies rarely happens. When it does, yes, it is magical and perhaps that is why we all keep going out there. Over my experience there are some things I have learned about myself. What I do and don’t like. I do not like the jerking motion associated with rough seas. I am a fair weather sailor. Generally speaking that means we leave with light winds because heavier winds mean bigger seas. Lighter winds mean we run the engine. We have never ever felt bad about the fact that we are motor sailors, let those other wind junkies go slogging out there in 6 foot seas, not me, not me. I do not enjoy spending days on a constant heel. I do not enjoy taking spray over the bow without the comfort of a dodger to hide behind or inside steering station. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt!!

Hence the fact that we now live on a power boat. Yes, we gave up our deep keel and white sheets for Detroit Diesels. We still want to travel, we don’t want to commit to a house on land, nothing could keep us away from boating. Having our experiences and our choices we also now want comfort, space and speed. Felicity affords us all of that. For us, we have lived on the sailor’s side, we loved it and we learned many things. For now, we are on a different path but we are still traveling and we will never stop.

Travelers? Yes. 

Travelers with a boating problem? Definitely!

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