Sailing Capital

August 20, 2012

“I can see clearly now…the stuff is gone…There are no obstacles in my way…”

I have taken the liberty to change the lyrics to the above affectionately revered song.  It has been one long process to get to ‘here and now 2012’ but here we are nonetheless…my husband, Chris, and I living with our two cats, Radar and Hawkeye in a sweet little town called “Oriental” in N.C.  It is the sailing capital of North Carolina the custom signs exclaim from the roadside, and this gal feels right at home having grown up in the sailing capital of the World; Annapolis, Maryland, though I am sure some other states may challenge that claim, Newport, R.I., for instance, but that is another blog entry.

I wished that I could say that getting rid of the majority of our stuff and selling our house has been the most freeing and liberating experience I have ever had…If only I could join the ranks of minimalist seeking individuals and say how great it felt to leave our huge house, move into a smaller space and pare down my clothing to twenty four interchangeable pieces and never look back.  How I wish I could be like those highly evolved people that I rank with the likes of Mother Theresa, Monks, and those following Buddhist principles.  To not just intellectually know that experiences and people are more valuable in one’s life than things, but to really feel it *comfortably* and live it every day…that is what I have been striving for in the last two and half years of my life as I have given away, sold, donated, and recycled a huge majority of what I owned.  I have embraced the process whole heartedly, with a wide open willingness, and the death clutch of a woman on the brink of losing the very center of her being…

Before Chris and I ever decided that we were going to attempt to make a very long time dream of mine, and then ours, a reality, it was becoming clear to me that I had issues letting go of things…there were clothes I had from college, maybe a few from high school, there was an inordinate amount of paperwork from research and writing piling up in my office, padding my hopes and fears, and past writing in a soft layer of modified tree pulp.  As much as I attempted to stay organized with files and folders, and spend tons of time cleaning and categorizing, I would still panic if the doorbell rang or we were having people over to entertain.

While Chris was not the neatest guy in the world…he did attempt to clean up his desk regularly and not acquire more unless he truly needed it.  He is a techie and handy guy, so his biggest struggles with clutter were the garage and the tangle of black wires that were constantly revealing themselves in potentially fatal webs of chaos…but soon enough Chris would attempt to tame them with Velcro straps or cardboard boxes and life would go on as usual…rarely was he in a panic when company was expected.

Some consider it trendy to downsize and become a minimalist.  I decided to do it out of necessity of a lifestyle change and in pursuit of a dream.  It is one of those experiences in life that you are grateful you don’t understand what it will demand of you until it is complete, because if you did from the start you might never attempt it.

It started on a summer vacation we were spending at the beach in 2006, just the two of us, a couple years after moving to North Carolina.  Our dog, Della, and I had arrived at the beach the night before Chris.  The Stanley Cup finals were on and The North Carolina Hurricanes were playing.  It was the first ice hockey game I had watched from start to finish and I was hooked.  The next evening Chris came back from walking Della by himself because I couldn’t tear myself away from the finals that night either, and he said, “I think we need to go cruising…”  At first I thought he was referring to “cruising” on his motorcycle…no, he clarified…on a sailboat.  Wait a minute…this was my dream…when I was twenty and twenty one I dreamed of sailing around the world on a sailboat…I went to presentations by couples who had sailed all the way to the Galapagos Islands and had photographs of rare species…I had dreamed big back then…but now…in our thirties…we can’t do that NOW…

We had no sailboat, and I was not about to give up our home, our jobs, everything we had worked so hard for in order to live a dream I had closed the book on – at least for the next couple decades of my life.  Although, I did contemplate it for a little while…tried it on for size.  We went and sailed aboard a sailboat that would require that we sell it all to afford purchasing, and then and there I knew I wasn’t ready for that kind of leap without testing the waters, literally and figuratively first.  I had sailed a lot, raced in college, accumulated a lot of hours on the water…but none with Chris.  I had occasionally driven his seventeen foot inflatable photo boat while he snapped pictures on the water of sailboat racing and nature…but sailing a boat is a another experience all together, requiring teamwork and skill of another nature.

We chartered a sailboat out of Washington, N.C. for a long weekend by ourselves to see what it was like to sail together.  We started off with a heavy boat with dual steering stations and a pilot house.  We had light winds for the first day and half when the outside steering cable broke and the charter company sent someone to bring her home and deliver a light and sprightly, Beneteau 32 for the remainder of our two or three days…of course that is when we had heavy wind, gusts and serious storms, but we handled her fine and discovered beautiful coastal towns of North Carolina like Bath and Belhaven.

We compromised and found a very affordable sailboat that was in very good condition but needed minor cosmetic work like deck paint.   She was a sound English boat and was Ocean worthy if in the future we decided to pursue what seemed like an impossible endeavor to me at the time.  Sailing aboard s/v Jubilee for four years and taking care of her gave us a firm foundation of experience in which to draw when making a big decision like saying goodbye to our life structure as we knew it and embracing the cruising life.

After spending years here on the Neuse River sailing out of New Bern, down to Adam’s Creek, threading our way down that portion of the ICW to Beaufort, N.C. and out to Cape Lookout we decided it was time to try for what originally got us back out on the water to begin with, the seed of ‘what-if’, turned into question of ‘why not?’

While enjoying a vacation aboard s/v Jubilee floating around on the Neuse river Chris looked at me from down below in the cabin, neck bent, so his head would clear the cabin ceiling, and let me know he could not live aboard not being able to stand up completely, and so the quest for our next sailboat intended for extended time aboard began.  Chris did a ton of research and found what for me was the perfect cruising sailboat.  A 1984 Wauquiez Pretorien.  The boat had a great reputation, many have sailed around the world on Pretoriens.  While she was strong and well built, she was also touted to be nimble and fast.  She had lines like one of my favorite race boats in college, an Ocean racer.  Chris had found two, one in Charleston, S.C. and the other in Deltaville, VA.  We decided to purchase the boat in Charleston.

We immediately listed our beloved Westerly, s/v Jubilee, and found her future owner in four months.  We began working on the Wauquiez which we later renamed, s/v Alchemy.  She had some engine issues some of which we were aware of, some of which became evident after running her a bit.  We started customizing that which we would want for cruising although our house was still not sold.

Chris and I decided that unless we sold the house we would not go cruising, we had thought of renting it, but I just didn’t want to take the chance, while we were away and not in the area, of the possibility that the house could be damaged and need work and money to repair.  Our loan on the boat was manageable if we had to stay on and continue to work until the then bleak economic time would turn around.  We listed our house but there was no movement.  For eight months we waited while dealing with house showings after a massive effort on my part to de-clutter.  We listed our house at what we now know was a pie-in-the-sky price, and while there were a lot of showings, no offers.  We tried then for a few months to list by owner and bring the price down a bit.  We finally decided to hire another Realtor who came in and respectfully let us know that if there was any way we could “stage” the house that he felt that would help in addition to lowering the price a bit more.

‘Stage’ the house!?!  And we will have to pay for this privilege – You have to be kidding me?!?  I liked this Realtor a lot.  I had met him during one of my canvasing efforts with our brochure when we were trying for a FSBO.  When I met Peter I immediately was put at ease.  His was one of the few Realty offices I walked into that had an actual Realtor sitting duty at the front desk, and the office was busy, unlike some of the offices where all the lights were off and only the Admin was there.

Our house looked good, mind you it was an eclectic mix of furniture from three different eras, and I am by no means an Interior Designer, and I never painted with color since I liked the creamy walls set against the depth of the wood window frames that were just so gorgeous.  Sure we could use an infusion of textiles to warm up the brick floor downstairs, and yes, my shoe tree on the back of the closet door was not super attractive, but I had paired down my shoes…Staging, no way!

A week and a half later, as I sweat it out over a cup of coffee, I came to terms that yes, there would be strangers in my house in less than a half an hour, deconstructing my domicile as I knew it, and introducing what I thought would be trite, and contrived objects of grandeur upon something so intimate as my lingerie tower.  Silk flowers would weasel their way into my environmentally conscious home and bring down its very integrity by the blush of what I then thought would be inane faux plants breathing synthetic into the very pores of my home.  I was feeling serious anxiety as the staging van pulled up.

The knock on the door was answered and Michele walked in.  She was friendly and warm, heck she was the kind of person I would have been happy to go have a cup of coffee with.  She walked in, without judgment that I could see, hey, where were her high heels I had imagined she would be wearing, and the silk suit, and loads of eye makeup…with her perfectly painted, long fingernails that she would use to point in the direction of my failings???  Oh, thank god she left that perfectionistic, mean Interior Design snob back at the office!  Schwoo…I could get through this.  That morning and until about 2 p.m. Michele and her team turned our home into what we affectionately deemed:  “The Barbie Dream House”.  While that is a little snarky of us, our house took on such a beautiful aura of its own.  Sure, I did take it personally that any personal affect that was just ‘too much’ me had to go…yes, I did feel I was being ushered out the door a little more quickly than I wanted, but in terms of our goal of selling our home, the house, it was one of the best investments we made.

The days of people coming to see the house and nit picking things like the bookshelves we installed not being sophisticated enough, or where are the granite countertops, and why isn’t the master closet bigger, and where is the garden tub…those days were gone with our new interior design facelift.  Is the general American public really that impressionable???  After this experience I have to answer yes…

We decided to move aboard our boat s/v Alchemy after Chris was laid off from his job with another six thousand four hundred and ninety-nine people.  His career of eleven and a half years was over, and while it was time for this to happen in many respects, it still hurt.  We also still had a significant mortgage over our heads. It was a stressful time with other life changing experiences lumped on in a two week expanse of time for good measure.  Our life was surprisingly taking sharp turns in completely different directions and then within moments it was veering off in another.  Life was like a fickle racecar during the month of July 2011.  Our intention was to live on the boat at Northwest Creek Marina that winter until the house sold.  We would minimize the stress of having to always field calls and be ready for showings and work on the boat to get her ready for cruising.

Our friends at the marina, many who have been cruising to the Bahamas and beyond, strongly advised us, if there was any way to make it happen to just get going and go for the Bahamas that winter…if not the Bahamas, at least Florida.  Don’t stay at the dock, they warned, it will be cold and depressing.  It didn’t take much convincing for Chris, but for me, it was our fellow sailing friends there at NWCM that inspired me to just get on with it and go.

We had a massive yard sale, sold some of Chris’ photography equipment, and other valuable items, and made huge donations to Habitat for Humanity and Goodwill.  It was that money that paid for our day to day living expenses while aboard.  We had $100.00 left when we returned which we paid to our neighbor who had mowed the lawn for us.  That was an indication to me that it was all meant to be.

I had many misgivings about leaving with our house not rented, a mortgage, a fee for staging now, utilities, etc….  How could I relax miles from home?  Was this really the best time to go cruising?  The answer was No, it wasn’t the best time to go cruising, there was a lot of stress in our lives which I am not even mentioning here, a lot of very sad stuff happened before we left and while we were in transit, but what I learned is no time is the best time.

I will never for the rest of my life forget those first six months aboard.  The magnificence, the low points, the discomfort, the beauty, the friendships made, the new places explored, the sea life…It was one of the steepest, least forgiving, learning curves I have ever had, but one of the most, if not the most, rewarding one ever!

I feel that I forfeited a lot.  I gave away so many ‘things’ that I loved, I said goodbye to a one of a kind home that our neighbor and his family built, I had to step up to the plate and be responsible for any outcome of this adventure there might be in regards to significant aspects of our lives.  I had to overcome major fear of the unknown and the power of the Ocean that is not always forgiving and beautiful, but has its own balance.

Then there was the forfeit of relationships I felt.  I had friends and family members with fear for our wellbeing, and some instances I felt pure anger pressed our direction.  I felt misunderstanding, and zero tolerance for the decisions we were making…for the first time in my life I was conscious of seriously going against the grain of what I have been prescribed by the culture’s belief  I live in of what I ‘should’ be doing, and feeling a lot of push back.  There were many that exclaimed that we were ‘living the Dream’ and others whom I think just down right felt we were being irresponsible, turning our backs on what is the ‘right’ thing to do with our lives at this juncture in our early fourties.

My perspective was this…I married a man I met in college.  I will never forget the first time I met him I was quite mesmerized by a sparkle in his eye.  A driven man, but balanced by a mischievous, spontaneous quality that I so respected.  I was a spontaneous soul back then too…I remember he was one of the first people I met on my first weekend night at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.  We sat on a log in front of a bonfire that night at the near end of the St. Mary’s River at Church Point.  He was inspired, as was I.  We would be good friends for many years before exploring the other possibilities of our relationship…he would knit me together with words of solace when my heart would be broken yet again by a boy that I loved.

The night that I realized that the mortgage, to pay for a house, that housed a bunch of stuff that just redirected my energy from my true calling had diminished, if not extinguished, all spark of life in my husband’s eyes, and in fact, left his head hanging in disillusionment and despair, was the night that it was time to say goodbye to the life as we knew it.  We would leave the life of participating in corporate America where we have little control of our destiny, where we might be moved to places we wouldn’t necessarily have chosen freely in the quest of ‘S’uccess with a capital ‘S’, and where one could lose themself and inner voice in the low, dull, constant hum of the machine moving towards a collective good defined by the stock holders and the big man in charge.  It was time for our Exit, and while I knew it wouldn’t be easy, that I would have a lot to lose, nothing meant as much to me as Chris’ sense of well-being, my own, and our marriage.

That night occurred about three weeks before Chris would be one of many others who were laid off where he worked.  Chris had an eleven and a half year run.  The company he had worked for treated him well for those years.  At the time in our lives his salary was a great one, he liked his job a lot, and we have no regrets.  I did realize though how precious our lives are, and how important it is to choose our community and where we want to live.  We lucked out that the two corporate moves we made were in excellent communities but it is not lost on me now that where we live influences our daily lives to such an extent.  That it is so important to me to love where I live and that it supports that which nurtures me, for me that translates into water.

On November 14, 2011 we pushed away from slip C-6 at NWCM.  It was no different than any other day backing out of our slip, Chris was at the helm, the wind was blowing against our stern in a counterproductive direction, and I was exclaiming recommendations as we left. As we fueled up at the fuel dock I resurrected the netted christening bottle to christen our s/v Alchemy with.  We had changed the name and had yet to say the ‘name changing prayer’ or christen her, so I figured this was the time.  As I made my way to the bow and broke the bottle against her hull I felt a new relationship form, one of a boat’s prior experience, the miles under her hull to Europe and back with her previous owners, and the light blue water miles to the Caribbean and back, I felt the love of the previous owners for her, their delight and struggles, all of it, in a moment I felt it paralleling my own experience as I was finally embarking on a young woman’s dream, my own, of so many years ago.  I couldn’t believe that the day had come…the dream I had once outlined on a napkin with a fellow crew member, while different parameters, one in the same…like the dream I whispered in my then love’s ear and he looked at me in his wisdom of older years and had told me it just wasn’t realistic…it was happening…today!

Pictures care of Steve Cortelyou – Thanks Steve!

Christening her s/v Alchemy

November 11, 2011 – Off into the Great Unknown