I see a white sail
Skipping cross a blue bay
And I say Someday I will
I see a young man
strumming a green guitar
and I say Someday I will
I don’t have a plan
It's not that kind of thing
I'm not Martin Luther King
It's just sometimes I know
That's the way I'm suppose to go
"Someday I Will" Jimmy
Buffett, Matt Betton
Something happened earlier this
month, we started our third year of "Living the Dream"! It was a Monday, just like any other day here
in the Caribbean. I moderated the
morning cruisers net here in Carriacou, checked the latest tropical weather as
it is the heart of "H" season, and it had been blowing like stink all
weekend. We ran our two engines the
previous day due to squalls and high winds and at one point put them both in
gear to take stress off our anchor chain in 40 knot winds and they made a terrible
grinding noise so shut them down; we'll deal with that tomorrow. A fellow cruiser who is far more experienced
then we are said it sounded like bad engine mounts; great how many boat units
is that? (1 boat unit = $1,000.00USD) On top of all of that, Jo was recovering
from what we are pretty sure was Zika. (Jo is fully recovered but I seem to
have it as I write this - kind of inevitable) Yup, we're livin' da dream! One of those Facebook share your memories
things popped up from 14 years ago; really Facebook has been around that long? It was a picture of Jo and me in Abaco where
the dream live on a boat began. Fourteen
years, wow, that’s a long time ago and we just started year three of actually
living aboard. Of course the dream was
always tempered with realities of family, job, and money but it was always present
from that point on. I remembered once at
a memorial service for a friend, an acquaintance brought up, in the kind of
small talk you engage in these sorts of things,
that he had heard about our dream and thought that was so exciting. Jo said to me "I guess we had better go
through with it now". Not that we
weren’t going to but there were those exerting pressure on us to stay on land,
keep working, be there for the family, you know, that kind of stuff. I'm sure
they were earnest in their concern and only wanted what they thought was the
best for us but… So as you know, it's
well documented, we did it. We sold most
of our stuff; home, cars, possessions, etc. and we bought a boat; oh shit, we
bought a boat, abandoned our responsibilities, and sailed off the edge of the
earth. Well made it to the Caribbean at
least.
Dreams come with expectations and
expectations come with realities. Not to
put too much of a fine point on it but we were clueless when we began this
dream; maybe we still are. I put
together a logical plan of approach to it however. We would charter some boats, I would take
some sailing classes and get certain certifications. We would read blogs,
books, magazines, whatever we could find.
Yup we would be prepared! I
follow a lot of different groups that have to do with sailing on Facebook and I
enjoy reading the post that start "we have this dream…." , yup been
there. They are usually followed with a
series of questions that can't really be answered because dreams have
variables. Jo is a member of Women Who
Sail. A very earnest group dedicated to
supporting each other without male pontification! She occasionally shares some posts with me
and some have practical questions about the dream, like "what kind of
toilet paper can I use, I mean I have my favorite". Now this is not meant to be demeaning to the
question asker, in fact, it shows more in-depth analysis of the dream than men
seem to do. We tend to be a "we'll
figure it out once we are there" sort of group in general. For the most part those who respond to both kinds
of groups are supportive and offer advice from their point of view, leaving the
original poster, the one with the new dream, to decipher and decide what opinions
they want to hold on to, or more importantly what they want to share with their
partner. Then there are those who post,
"I have this dream but my partner thinks I am nuts", I'm not even going there. We are lucky, we both share the dream, which
is a good thing for the simple fact that if we didn't, we wouldn't still be out
here, or out here together. The thing
is, no one can create or live your dream for you and be ready, dreams, like
boats, are fickle.
The dream is powerful in this one!
There is a French boat anchored near us here in our hurricane
"time-out" box south of 12⁰ 40.00' North, or as we call it, Tyrell
Bay, Carriacou W.I. It's a very small
boat, looks to be very basic. There is a
couple, maybe late 20's with a small child.
The boat is solid and the male spends his day working on the boat while
the woman and child often go ashore.
They seem perfectly content with their dream and appear to have all they
need. There are others here with very
large boats well appointed with generators, water makers, lots of room, and
some even have air conditioning. Oh that
would be us, although we seldom run the AC when at anchor. Same dream, well maybe, at least the living
on a boat thing, the freedom thing. We
met an Italian sailor in St. Martin who was on an even smaller boat than the
French boat. Truthfully, I don't even
know how it was still afloat but it had gotten him across the Atlantic ocean
and now he needed to go back. He had no
GPS, a compass of dubious accuracy and no way to obtain an accurate weather
report. That's how we met him, he rowed
over to see if we spoke Spanish or Italian (his two languages) of course we did
not, but through his little English and hand signals we told him what we had
heard on the morning net, then one morning, he was gone, sailed off in that
very little boat across that very big ocean.
Did he make it? Don't know, but I
hope so. Was that what his dream was
when he first stepped on that little boat? We met another couple, we dubbed
them "the kids" the year before in St. Martin, who had walked away
from jobs in St. Thomas and figured they had enough money to buy a boat and
sail for two years before they headed back to the "real world." Last we heard they had taken jobs in St.
Johns U.S.V.I, short of their two year plan.
Did that invalidate their dream somehow, or did realities alter the
dream? Don't know, but they are young
and more flexible than us old farts. We
are boat friends with a couple most recently from Alaska. He was a pilot in the Navy back in Vietnam,
part of Air America and was part of St. Thomas back before there were massive
charter companies and credit card captains.
Fascinating people with a very deep back-story. Do they have a specific "dream"
that brought them here, or are they more like a line in a Jimmy Buffett
song:
Some of them
go for the sailing
Brought by
the lure of the sea
Trying to
find what is ailing
living in the
land of the free
Some of them
are running from lovers
Leaving no
forward address
Some of them
are running tons of ganja
Some are
running from the IRS.
Don't know, maybe. There are many more boat and island friends
we have met. Each fascinating in their
own way, each with their own reality, story, and dream. Some have swallowed the hook and moved back
to land, some are look at doing just that, at least part-time. Some have found their one particular island,
dropped the hook and haven't moved since.
Some have struck out across the big blue and are prowling the islands of
the South Pacific or the western Caribbean.
They come and go from anchorages each following their own dreams and
with the exception of making prudent judgments regarding weather are free to so. Do they find what it is they are looking
for? Who says they have to be looking
for anything.
"To
Dream the Impossible Dream" See
I know other songs than Buffett's. You must
be wondering what's our back story, what are we running from? Well sorry to disappoint, no great mystery,
no bodies left in the desert; although there were times. No, we just decided to follow that dream, our
dream. To not only live the life Jimmy
Buffet sings about but to, well I'm not sure;
that's the thing with dreams, you don't always remember all the details
once you wake up. Has this dream, our
dream, been fulfilled? Well in a way
yes. We did sell-it-all, buy a boat and
sail away. In another way no. My dreams of crossing oceans and exploring
the South Seas has been tempered with the realities of and commitments back
home and what 30 days at sea might mean.
Does that mean that dream is
dead? I hope not, it just needs
time. Jo's dreams, well you have to ask her. So here we are, year three of this
"dream". Will we make it to
year four? I have no way of knowing, but
I think so. Is it perfect, does it meet expectations? Well I am reminded of a story… A fly fisherman died and went to what he
thought was heaven. On the first day
there he was standing in a beautiful trout stream just enough breeze at his
back, gently casting dry flies to rising trout and with each cast a
hook-up. After a while another fisherman
wandered by. He had been there a long
time and told the same story. Every day idyllic
conditions, rising fish, hook-up after hook-up.
The new arrival exclaimed "wow this really is heaven". The
old timer paused, looked at the newbie and said, "what makes you think
this is heaven"? You see, I think
our dream was just an outline, something to motivate us. In some ways it is
better than I imagined, in some ways worse; like being a parent. If it had met all the expectations, it might
have been easier in some respects but what might we have missed and what satisfaction
was gained from overcoming and dealing with the challenges. As for
the grinding noise in our transmissions that we thought might lead to an expensive
repair: turns out it was hard growth, barnacles,
etc. that had made their way into the rubber bearing (cutlass bearing) which
the prop (propeller) shaft goes through and which, along with the dripless
bearing, keeps the sea water on the outside of the boat. A little heat applied
and some tense moments while it ground its way out and we are back in business. No boat units expended; at least for now! Cause, well we sat in one place too long!
Another boat just entered the
anchorage and set to our starboard. A
French boat, there are a lot of French boats here. They were somewhere else last night and for
whatever reason they are here now. That’s
just how it goes, like the tide, boats come and go, dreams live or die. For now our
dream lives on. Different than 14 years
ago when it was conceived, or three years ago when it was born. In many ways different than we had expected
and when it gets too much we look to the West at sunset and the original
Lighting Designer reminds us of how lucky we are.
OneLove from your Lizards on Ice
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