JOURNEYS

The Plan (as it were)

In a nutshell the plan is to drive across America towing our little camper trailer and see what we can see along the way. We don't have a big budget so I am working where I can to boost what we do have. After visiting the requisite relatives along the way and seeing what we want, we are going to end up on the shores of Lake Erie where our sailboat, the 28 foot Feng Shui, is being stored. After about two to three weeks of prep work and upkeep we are going to move on board and cruise, first on the Great Lakes, and then through the Erie Canal and the Hudson River to the sea. Where we end up after that is up to our whim and the weather.

I almost would like to say that the desire to undertake this journey was the result of some life changing epiphany, that I woke up one morning with this sudden urge to just pack up the wife and kids, sell and or give away everything we couldn't fit in the Suburban and the 15 foot 1962 Shasta camper trailer, and take off for our sailboat in Ohio to live the life of live-aboard cruisers. The reality is that I've had the dream to do something like this as long as I can remember and I'm just now getting around to doing something about it.

Dreams

Having a dream is important, with it we can set and then attain goals and a major purpose, and without a purpose or direction we just sit and spin our wheels. Dreams give us an opportunity to pick our own course and our own destiny. One thing that I have noticed is that someone without a dream seems almost dead to me - a life stuck in the crowd, doing just the norm and never stepping out of the little box that society provides for you or what your peers and family think is the right thing. Don't get me wrong, I suppose some people's dream is to spend the first third of their lives going to school in order to work at a humdrum job for the next half to two thirds, constantly in debt, never owning anything just borrowing it from the bank or credit company, just so they can retire on a government stipend and whither away for their few remaining years. Not me, and not any one who is dynamic and successful. Big money lawyers and doctors almost assuredly had a dream to guide them. Anyone who can be called successful, not just financially mind you, had a dream first. The trick is in doing it. In other words, eventually you have to stop just dreaming and get up off your duff and do something; set a goal, make a plan, grow some balls, gather your courage and then step out.

Don't get me wrong, the dream didn't start out quite the way things are now. At first it was just me and a nameless, faceless woman of my dreams on a yacht sailing anywhere and everywhere and having grand adventures. Money, or at least where it came from, never seemed to enter into it. The boat was always something fantastic and grandiose, and my destinations always exotic and sexy. Freedom was the goal, plain and simple.

When I started hanging around with another kid in high school that had similar dreams and who knew something about sailboats and sailing, the dream grew. Sailing, now that was true freedom, and somewhere deep inside of me a hunger grew; ghosting along on the open ocean powered by Mother Nature herself, just the wind, the waves, the boat, and me ( and the exotic beauty at my side). That kid from high school became my best friend, and he's now known as the Crazy Captain Cliff.

After high school in landlocked Fairbanks, Alaska, I headed towards the sea. First to the salmon boats in the waters of off the Kenai Peninsula and then the US Navy for four and a half years. In the meantime Cliff had built a couple of small sailboats and then purchased a 17 foot fiberglass sloop with a centerboard. He had bought it while stateside and came to visit me in San Diego where I was stationed, towing it behind his 1976 Cadillac De Ville. We launched it into San Diego Bay and I got to sail for the first time. Mind you I had been dreaming about sailing for years, but actually doing it was more exhilarating than I had ever imagined.

I was hooked, bad. I couldn't get enough, I sailed every chance I got. Some friends of mine in southern California had a Catalina 27 and I talked them into taking me out almost every chance I could. Once I got back to Fairbanks Cliff and I sailed his little sailboat on the lakes around Alaska all summer every summer. We became such regulars at the local lakes that people we didn't even know knew us as “those sailing dudes”. But always, in the back of our minds was that dream to just take off and sail around the world, after we were rich enough to do it of course.

One thing that I learned about myself while on the salmon boats and in the Navy was that I LOVED the sea. I mean, I had always imagined my self out on the ocean, but that love was for the freedom. Now it was a true love for the sea itself as much as anything and as soon as I could I went back to her. First I worked as a crewman on a trawler on the Bearing Sea, then as an engineer on a salmon tender on Bristol Bay. Every chance I had I went to the ocean, but living in the interior of Alaska didn't afford me as many chances as I would have liked, so I sailed every lake I could get to in the summers.

Just Do It

I have never been a money rich man, and probably never will. With me, money just seems to slide on past, run through my fingers, or avoid me all together. Life doesn't always give you riches in the form of money, but that didn't stop me from thinking that it would eventually. When I met my beautiful wife to be, Shawna, I told her that I fully intended to buy a large sailboat one day and sail around the world. I'm not sure but I think that hooked her. She says that something in my eyes and the way I talked about it made her believe me. She says that right then and there she knew I was going to do it. Well I guess she wanted to come along, because she married me and learned to sail and now powers my dream. Now when I look at her and our two daughters I know that true wealth isn't summed up by a bank account, in every way that matters I am a wealthy man. So I sailed when I could and talked about taking off one day, but I was still waiting for the proverbial bag of money to fall out of the sky so I could afford it.

Despite my love for the sea and my desire to take off and cruise the world I stayed landlocked and shore bound for quite a while. For one thing I guess in a way I was waiting for that nameless, faceless girl of my dreams to materialize, and when she did I guess, like I said, I was waiting for the bag of money to just fall out of the sky. It took me several years to realize was that that was not going to happen. Of course I had other excuses too, like waiting for the kids to grow older, but I was really just trying to get my courage up I think.

One thing that I have always done is read; books, magazines, online articles, whatever it was if it was about sailing and cruising (or history) I wanted to read it. Then one day it dawned on me, the only ones out doing what I wanted to do were the ones who just up and decided one day to stop waiting around for the world to hand it to them, and they just went and did it. Some were wealthy or well off, some were almost indigent and poor, but they did it anyway. I read once that the cost of cruising was everything you had in your pocket, no matter how much or how little that is. If you think about it, that is just like any lifestyle. How many people have very much left over after paying rent or a mortgage, utility bills, groceries, clothing, car payment, medical bills, etc.? Any thing left over goes to recreation and retirement accounts. Get a raise and get another payment. Get a bonus and get a toy, or pay back debt then finance a toy. In the end its all the same.

Now like I said, I'm not a rich man, money wise, and that didn't seem to be going to change soon. I really didn't see any reason to spend all of my income every month, no matter how much, financing a lifestyle that wasn't my dream, so we experimented. First we bought an RV then sold or gave away what we didn't need and stored what couldn't fit, and drove off down the highway to the coast. For a year we traveled the state of Alaska living as cheap as possible and went where we wanted. I worked when it was available and we needed it, but for that year we lived on less than ten thousand dollars. We camped on the beach in Homer, Alaska, and stayed with friends in Nikiski. We went to Seward and Whittier and Anchorage, and everywhere we went we visited the marinas and docks to look at sailboats. We dreamed, and the dream got more and more real. Eventually it became a goal, and then a purpose; and then a plan. So we went back to Fairbanks to work for two more years. I used some inheritance money to buy a sailboat that was near the east coast because that is where we wanted to start cruising and found the cheapest possible place we could to rent and got ready. Then last summer we traded the RV for the trailer, sold and gave away everything again (you wouldn't believe how much stuff you can accumulate in two years) and took off.

Of course I must give credit (or blame) where it is due. Captain Cliff had decided to stop waiting and just do it before I did. He and his family found their dream boat in Florida and were going to head out. I was going to be left behind, and that certainly helped kick me into gear. He was also feeding me books by and about folks and families that had cast off and just gone out and done it. His encouragement was paramount as neither one of us could imagine leaving the other behind or getting left behind ourselves. So I owe it to him that I grew some balls and got to it. But Cliff added one more needed ingredient to the mix; he is a boat-a-holic. At one point he owned five different sailboats, from a dinghy to a fifty foot schooner. Some of the work I did on our one year land cruise was on a 40 foot steel hull that he had bought in Anchorage. After a lot of sweat he gave that up and bought a larger, 50 foot schooner in Florida that was in almost ready to go condition. In the meantime he had traded the 17 foot sloop for a larger 24 foot trailer-sailor that we took to Prince William Sound. Cliff had also bought a 28 foot fiberglass boat on Lake Erie that he and his family had planned to take down the ICW (Intra-Coastal Waterway) to Florida. After finding his dream boat already in Florida he put the 28 footer up for sale, so I bought it.

The boat was already named Feng Shui, and I thought that fitting so it will stay. She is a 1968 Cal 28, designed by Bill Lapworth and built by Jenson Marine. In my opinion she is the perfect boat for my family and I to start out on. She is roomy enough but not so big that maintenance and upkeep are going to break us. There is ample room on board for the two girls and us and what we need. Of course we are not talking cavernous but the space utilization is the best I have ever seen on a boat this size. Each girl will have her own quarter-berth and Shawna and I have the large v-berth up front. The large dinette can be made into a large double berth for guests if needed. The head is small but not too small and the galley is at least larger than what we have in the Shasta now. Overall she is larger inside than the RV we used to have. She draws only 4 feet and with her fin keel and spade rudder she will be rather maneuverable in port, and being a Bill Lapworth design she should be rather fast and agile under sail. Instead of an inboard motor there is a 15 horse outboard in an outboard motor well in the lazzerette, so there is extra storage under the cockpit. Of course if she turns out to be too small we can always find something bigger once we are out there. Feng Shui is going to be our coastal cruiser while we learn the ropes and get used to life on the water but she is not the ideal round the world cruiser for us. With the kids we will need something larger and more self sufficient for longer crossings. But at least while we are on the water and around boats and other cruisers we can keep an eye and ear out for what we want next.

So here we are hanging out in Colorado waiting for a weather window to allow us to go on down to Florida where I am going to help Captain Cliff and his family get their boat ready to go and hopefully find some work along the way. At least it will be warmer. We have family and friends all over the country so our journey might be a little zig zagged. The earliest I think we can start working on our boat this spring will be sometime in April so we have some time to kill. Once in Florida Shawna and the girls are going stay for a while with our adopted Gramma Cheryl in Bartow while I head down to Lake Okeechobee to help Cliff. I also supposedly can find plenty of work working in the boatyards down in Fort Lauderdale. Once spring hits we are going to head up to Kentucky to visit Shawna's brother and to Illinois visit her grandparents before heading to our boat in Ashtabula, Ohio. I have a step brother who lives near Detroit that we want to visit too but we may wait and sail over to see him come summer.

One final thought, to quote a man whom I respect totally not just for his philosophy but more for his attitude.

“Don't Dream Your Life, Live your Dream!”

(Bob Bitchin)