|
|
It was just after midnight
and it was dark and stormy, honest. I had the midnight to three
watch and we were riding the rhumb line to Tortola like a
freight train with 25 to 30 knots just aft of the beam. I was
soaked with rain and spray at the helm station, hand steering
our 50 foot catamaran as we howled through yet another 40 knot
squall. Just then, an enormous roller lifted our stern and sent
us flying. As we took off down the wave, my eyes widened and I
leaned back watching twin V’s of water shooting up from the
bows. The sensation of speed, the noise, the exhilaration, and
the fear were tremendous. I thought fleetingly of Mark Twain’s
wry definition of adventure as a journey during which at some
point, you wish you were at home. I think I had just hit that
point.
The longer journey from
weekend sailor to full time cruiser was daunting but filled with
a sense of adventure, purpose and discovery that helped us to
keep the dream alive. Our plans started to gel after our first
bareboat charter; Why shouldn’t we do this full time?” we
thought. My wife, Christina and I had the cruising life set as
our goal when we started our family, so we had our two kids
close together to make home schooling easier. I began to read
every book and website that I could find on the subject,
particularly those dealing with families aboard. We made it a
point to get to know as many cruisers as possible and to pick
their brains as often as possible. This had the added benefit
of starting some lasting friendships as well.
In the beginning, things
moved painfully slow as we worked at educating ourselves. We
set and broke more than a few deadlines. I took a course for my
USCG captain’s license and drove a whole platoon of unfortunate
boat brokers mad with my catamaran questions. We soon learned
that the internet was a treasure trove of information on all
things related to cruising. All of the books and articles are
right on the mark when they say that the hardest thing to do is
to cut the dock lines.
When we sold our business,
things really began to accelerate. We found the perfect boat (a
2002 Switch 51 catamaran) and made the deal in short order – our
years of boat shopping and test sails paid off handsomely. We
then huddled endlessly with our CPA to get our financial ducks
in a row. Cash flow, rental income, and the four letter word of
cruising - the “budget”. “Budget? - We don’t need no
steeeenking budget.." Our CPA begs to differ.
Next came the traumatic
process of getting rid of 15 years worth of accumulated stuff,
cars, boats, books, pets, clothes, you name it. Yard sales,
salvation army trips, gifts to friends and many heart wrenching
decisions later, it was done. We rented out our house furnished
for a year – again taking advantage of the internet. Our plan
was to sail for a minimum of a year (even if we hated it after 6
months). If we loved it, we would cruise as long as the family
and the budget could stand it.
My wife, daughters, Cassie
(age 7) and Juliana (age 5), and I moved aboard our new boat,
now named “Zia” , on July 1. I was promptly smacked square in
the face by the cold mackerel of reality. I had covered every
single base and planned for every conceivable contingency except
for my own mental attitude. Gone were the house, the cars, the
jobs, the TV, the bandwidth, the hot tub, and the million other
things that we had gotten used to. Now, all four of us were
crammed into a living space that seemed smaller than our old
walk-in closet. Just to flush the toilet could be a gruesome
task and sleeping without air-conditioning in the Chesapeake was
a talent that I had yet to develop. I spent a solid two weeks
in an anxious funk, full of questions and doubts and 3AM
misgivings. Christy and the kids jumped right into the
lifestyle with both feet and although it took me longer, I
gradually came to terms with our new reality. The best parts of
the lifestyle were still to come, I reasoned. We spent a month
at a friend’s
dock getting ready and then headed up the east coast to Maine
for our shakedown cruise. Letting loose the dock lines was
indeed the ecstatic culmination of years of focus and it was an
emotional moment for the whole family. I wanted to shout out
the famous Martin Luther King quote, “Free at last, free at
last…”
Cruising the east coast was
a grand way to start our adventure. We hit all of the hot spots
from Block Island (where we learned fog 101) to Sag Harbor to
Newport to the Vineyard, Nantucket, Boston, Provincetown
(lifestyle 101), Gloucester (perfect storm), Kittery and
Portland. We came back down through Long Island Sound, with a
week in New York City on a mooring at the 79th street
boat basin for $30 a night (food 101).
For our first offshore
passage, we felt that we would need the help and the camaraderie
offered by a cruising rally. The Caribbean 1500 experience was
an amazing thing to behold. Steve Black and Hal Sutphin were
the perfect rally leaders, knowledgeable and unflappable amongst
the 55 frenzied skippers working to get their boats and crews
ready for the trip. The boat inspections, weather briefings and
seminars were educational and reassuring at the same time. The
weather briefings turned out to be right on the mark and the
trip, although it had some rough spots, was generally without
drama, at least for us on Zia. Perhaps the biggest benefit of
the rally was meeting 54 other boatfuls of likeminded cruisers.
As I write this in the BVI, we are flying our pink Caribbean
1500 flag and meeting and cruising with many of the new friends
that we made on the rally. Pretty much every harbor we drop the
hook in has a pink flag or two flying.
Our grand plan has been
shaping up pretty well since we seem to have taken to this
cruising life so far. We will cruise the Caribbean and Bahamas
until spring of 2006. If all goes well, we will leave the
Bahamas for Bermuda and then off to Europe for a year or two of
cruising the Med. You can keep track of our progress at
www.zialater.com. We learned from our experience that it
takes a lot more to get cruising than blithely saying, “cut
loose those dock lines”. We have also found that the cruisers
down here run the gamut from a crewed Oyster 65 to an Alberg 30
with the budgets to match. We all share one thing in common, we
did cut those dock lines.
|
