Cathy’s thoughts

I thought I would throw something in since Dean has been doing all of the posting.   I had written a story about us and our thought process before beginning this adventure.  I am going to post it on here with the thought of still maybe selling it to a magazine, but I wanted our family and friends to get a glimpse of what we have done to begin this adventure.  So here is what I wrote about five years ago and I have added on the last paragraph recently, but by reading Dean’s blogs you can see how this has progressed:

What Are We Thinking???
By Cathy Cooper

I caught the sailing bug from my husband.  It seemed to start out so innocently.  When I moved to Reno, Nevada with my two young children, my then boyfriend talked me into taking a class on Scuba diving.  I’ve always been a good swimmer and grew up around lakes, so this didn’t concern me as the lessons were in a pool and the final dive was in Lake Tahoe.  Mask, snorkel, boots, fins, gloves, became a normal part of my vocabulary.

After that, we were married on Catalina Island in Avalon at the Zane Grey Pueblo.  What a view!  We went snorkeling out around the casino and even had my family join in.  Then we had an adventure.  We went on a seven day Mexico cruise.  We didn’t really head blue water, but we were on the ocean and it was something I had never experienced before.  We loved stepping out on deck and feeling the wind and the sea air on our faces.  My hair flew wildly as we stood out on the top deck cruising along at 22 knots.

I knew my husband had gone sailing in the past.  He pretty much talked about it nonstop, so when we heard about the Pacific Sailboat Expo, I immediately bought him tickets to attend for his birthday present that year.  We went not knowing what to expect and with no preconceived notions of where this would lead us.

We had a blast!  We crawled on boats, attended a couple of seminars, explored the city, and met some very interesting people who were living a life that we thought was a little bit extreme.  We lived in the desert and I was a little more than put off by the thought of taking a little boat and traveling on the big, scary ocean.  I lived on the Oregon coast once and just didn’t understand why anyone would want to be around all that wind and rain.

We took a couple more cruises in the Caribbean.  It was amazing!  We even took a sailboat to a small island and went snorkeling in the crystal clear water.  It felt like we were smack dab in the middle of Finding Nemo as we enjoyed the life we saw under the sea.  The ocean started to be less scary and more interesting to me.

We attended the Sailboat Expo each year after that.  Each time we came away with new perspectives and met more amazing people.  The seminars became more interesting as I considered the thought of owning a sailboat. We talked about chartering or taking people on cruises where we would teach them how to sail or just give them a nice vacation, but it never really sunk in and grabbed hold of me.  This was more of a fantasy land and we lived in the real world.

Nevertheless, we started saving our change and called it our sailboat fund.

Two years ago at the Expo we saw an advertisement for sailing lessons at a price we could afford.  We signed up without a second thought.  We bought sailing gloves and PFDs and were ready to take on the world.  We spread the three classes out over the following year (Basic Keelboat, Basic Coastal Cruising, and Bareboat Chartering).  We sailed around the San Francisco Bay in both calm and heavy winds.  It was exhilarating!

That July we celebrated our 10^th anniversary by taking a 15 day cruise to Hawaii.  This was the first time I ever experienced blue water in any way.  Granted, we were on a huge cruise ship the size of a small city, but it was still an eye opener.  It was just water… and lots of it!  The islands and the people were wonderful.  I was hooked immediately.

On the cruise back home I introduced the idea of buying a sailboat and cruising around the world.  My husband had no problem with my line of thinking.  He took it and ran!  By the next April we had moved out of our house and in with our kids so that we could put our home up for sale.  We completed our final sailing lesson during the Sailboat Expo that year and were asking more questions and attending more seminars than ever before.  We started reading books, magazines, web blogs, and anything else we could get our hands on in order to learn more about what we are still dreaming of doing.

At the present time we are waiting.  This is the hardest part.  We would leave tomorrow if we could.  Our home hasn’t sold yet, my daughter let us know we are going to be grandparents for the first time, and I need to have a new pacemaker/defibrillator installed next year before we head out on our 3-5 year plan.

Even with the drawbacks, we are still planning and getting ready for our trip around the world.  There have been mixed reactions from our children, family, and friends.  Some are jealous, some think we are just plain crazy, but most of them are just as excited as we are.

Wow!  An adventure… that’s what we are thinking.  A new and exciting way of life, a way to see the world and experience cultures and people we would never get a chance to see any other way.  The anticipation is sometimes more than we can stand, but we will accomplish what we have set out to do.  I’ll keep you posted.

Here it is five years later and we are finally at the point that we will be out sailing within the next few months.  The economy went south and our home ended up being worth less than we owed on it.  We had to move back in, but we kept our possessions to a minimum knowing we still had the sailing bug and would continue to work towards our goal.  We focused on saving money and living on less.  Slowly the housing market improved, but we still weren’t counting on that money to live our dream.  We both turned the big “5” “0” and were feeling anxious.  So now we are ready to move forward.

Let me know what you think… Cathy