On an Island in the Sun

Saturday June 5, 2010

This will be me in a few years

Although Matt and I started this blog so fans of sailing and friends of ours could enjoy stories from weekends on the lake (and you’d still read it if were only that, right?), there is a much bigger reason for us to share our story with everyone.  Next summer on August 1st we will be leaving our land life behind and becoming cruisers.  Remember how I mentioned before that once Matt gets a hobby he’ll become obsessed with it?  Well apparently somewhere in the 10 hours a day he spends online reading about sailing and cruising he started reading about cruising sailors and what it takes to live that kind of lifestyle.  We’d always talked about doing traveling and wanting to see the world.  Back in 2007 we spent a week visiting my parents who were living in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam at the time, and were completely enamored with experiencing other cultures.  There was even a month when we got back that we were searching the costs of moving to Vietnam because we thought a life change like that would be good for us.  There’s too much world out there to stay in one place.

So sitting at my desk on a Tuesday afternoon I get an email from Matt that said something along the lines of “I was just looking into this, and did you know that people are cruising and living on budgets of only $20,000 a year?”  Obviously with the life we’re living on land we’re spending much more than that and I had to think to myself, ‘Wow, that actually sounds doable with a couple years of planning and saving’.  We didn’t make plans that day to leave our lives behind and head out into the the wild blue yonder, but the more we researched it the more it sounded like a possibility.  I would spend days at work daydreaming about sailing around to lush sandy beaches with year round sun and warmth.  Plus time away from the daily grind?  Sign me up!

After a few more months of talking it over we came up with a plan to spend two years sailing between the east coast of the states and the Bahamas.  Matt’s original idea was for us to sail around the world in about 3 years.  I was not too keen on this plan as I could not see myself going three weeks at a time without seeing land and did not want to cross two whole oceans.  In the end we agreed on the States/Bahama plan so that I would feel comfortable staying close to land, and this would allow us to bring Mazzii on the trip as well.  It’s too bad we won’t be able to go any further south than the Bahamas with saildog aboard because she would have to be quarantined, but I don’t think I can complain seeing as I get to spend two years cruising.

The general plan is that we’ll leave out of Muskegon in August of next year.  Sailing through the Great Lakes and Erie Canal we’ll be dumped in New York Harbor and begin our journey south.  Stopping among little town on the way we’ll get to the Bahamas sometime in December and stay there until March when we’ll go north again.  Hitting the towns we missed the first time we’ll keep working our way up and hopefully spend a few months in Maine before beginning our decent south for one more winter.  Then begins our trip home where we’ll resume our lives.  Not exactly the way they were left though.  The house will be sold and our jobs will have been quit, we’ll be starting all over again.  But tomorrow gives no promises and I’d hate to put off something like this until retirement and not have it happen because we don’t have the means then, or have health problems.  There’s nothing stopping us now, no kids, no commitments, nothing we can’t pick up again when we get home.

So follow us in our preparations to leave and once the journey starts.  It should be one hell of a ride!!