Closed!

As of this week - we no longer have a financial anchor firmly holding us to the state of Connecticut.  Our house of more than ten years officially closed and has proud new owners.  I truly hope that they have better luck than we did with it.  It would be a good bet that they do, as we dumped what seemed like an endless amount of funds into it to replace windows, siding, doors, garage doors, roof, furnace, central a/c, and the hot water system three times!  Yes, we replaced the entire hot water system three times in ten years - conveniently there always seemed to be a reason why the "warranty" was not valid.  But I digress...

Unlike the other steps in our transition to a life in the Caribbean, handing over the keys to our house did not take much of an emotional toll.  We never really had an attachment to our house, as we never really felt at home in Connecticut.  Instead of being a home, it was no more than a place to lay our head and store our things.  In the end we are thankful for having the house, but it ended up being a tremendous financial loss and parting with it was more relief than sorrow.

With the sale of the house, a new chapter begins.  Next week we head for the islands to launch our boat for the season and attempt to make her the home that our house in Connecticut never was.

"Shit just got real"

I seem to be having a serious case of deja vu... Repeatedly.  For months now, time and time again I have stopped in my tracks, frozen.  For that moment, I have stood there in sheer terror quietly thinking to myself - "Shit just got real".

I always thought that when the time finally came for us to make our move to the Caribbean, it would be so easy.  Because I have such malice for Connecticut, I thought that when the time came there would literally be smoke rolling off my tires and this state that I have detested for ten years would be nothing more than a fading landscape in my rear-view mirror.  Wow, was I ever wrong.  No surprise there really, I tend to be very talented at being wrong.

The truth of the matter is that making the decision to pursue our dreams was and is terrifying.  We are leaving a known with financial security to venture into something entirely new with an uncertain outcome.  We are leaving careers that we have built and maintained to try something new that we might not be successful at.  Maybe I just don't have the balls, but for me it was far harder than I ever imagined.  I have to keep reminding myself that we are also leaving a place that was literally killing us.  We are leaving a place where although we had good careers and income, we lacked anything vaguely resembling a life.  I have to keep remembering we are getting the chance of a lifetime to follow our dreams and create a new life.

After weighing all the pros and cons, eventually a hard decision has to be made which can not be reversed.  It's a lot like jumping into the deep end of a cold pool.  You want to swim, you know you can swim, but that water is cold.  You just left the diving board and there is literally no turning back.  That's where we are right now - in limbo.  We are far from the diving board, hanging in mid-air.  We have been looking forward to the swim ahead for a long time, but we are terrified of hitting that cold water for the first time.  The unknown is unnerving.  "Shit just got real".

When I met with my boss, whom I have known and highly respected for ten years now, and explained what we intended to with a resignation, "Shit just got real".  When we rented a UHaul trailer and pulled a load of "stuff" to our summer house, "Shit just got real".  The day we officially closed on, and became owners of a 50 foot yacht, "Shit just got real".  Our house was listed on the market, and a few showings later we were signing offers and contracts, "Shit just got real".

And now, as I sit here writing this, I'm surrounded by boxes marked "Ship to boat", "Summer house", etc.  We have spent our weekend sorting through all our life possessions, and preparing for an estate sale of the remaining contents of our house, furniture, etc.  "Shit just got real".  This is really happening.  We are hanging in the air off of the diving board, with an inevitable big splash coming our way.  Thank goodness the water in the Caribbean is warm.

Step 7: Throw out all the steps - It happened

Taken in April, contemplating how I would eventually make my escape

I have said many times on this blog, the difference between a dream and reality is "simply" putting a plan in place and working towards it.  I have also said many times here, that while I had a plan, it was missing a lot of pieces.  My whole thought since I stood on the bow of a boat in the Caribbean and said "I'm going to do this", was to attack the pieces of the plan that I could do here and now.  I figured that if I worked on all the things within reach now, that eventually somehow the other missing pieces would eventually come to me.

It happened.

No seriously - It happened.  A seemingly single event, set off a chain reaction that could not, and would not be stopped.  I had optimistically pictured my plans coming to fruition (somehow) in a five to ten year time frame.  Forget that.  This is happening now.

Taxes.  That's what it was.  Taxes.  In 2014, I got literally clobbered with taxes.  That simple fact started a thought process and a conversation with a friend who is a charter boat captain.  That conversation grew during a trip to our beloved St. John, where our friend came to meet us for dinner.  That dinner conversation grew into bigger plans.  Those bigger plans turned into a random phone call with yet another captain.  That random phone call turned into that captain reading our story on this blog.  The reading of our story here turned into a flurry of phone meetings and another trip down to the islands.  That trip down to the islands turned into an amazing opportunity, with some great people betting on a couple young and hungry dreamers.  Those great people betting on a couple hungry dreamers, turned into a complete plan - my plan with all the missing pieces finally filled in.

That amazing chain reaction of events couldn't be stopped.  It wouldn't be stopped.

Over the past years I have struggled with my state of existence.  I'm not "living" here, I simply exist.  I get to live only during short periods of vacation and weekends that I can escape Connecticut.  Existing here is nothing more than being in a rat race of continuous bumper to bumper traffic, inching ahead - there's simply not enough time for anything else.  Sure, I have a great job and that certainly has allowed for a lot of things, but I'm not living.  I'm not experiencing life.

At the same time, 2014 has taken so many loved ones away, far before their time.  I watched a great friend take his last breath.  I'm not sure I'll ever be the same after that.  I came to the hard realization that life is short, and I'm not living.  It happened - all the pieces of a real plan to start anew were presented before me, and I'm not letting it pass.

It happened - We're making our great island escape aboard a 50 foot yacht.

Where have I been?

S/V Fidelity, our home for our 2013 Virgin Island Adventure

In what seems like just a blink of an eye, it has been over two months since my last post.  Why?  In short, I have been running on virtual overload.  Each year, we venture to the Virgin Islands somewhere around the first or second week of November.  Likewise, each year I find that I have packed on some physical heft as a result of a few factors.  Mainly the cause for my abdominal growth is an excess in indulgence during the summer months at my summer lake home.  It seems that as we pass the summer days by on our pontoon boat, the beers and snacks slowly add up in the form of...  well... fat.  Typically as the summer season comes to an end around Labor Day, I realize I have put on 15-20 pounds that I like to take off before we head south to the islands some 8-9 weeks later.  As I lumbered on to the scales this Labor Day, I found I had astonishingly added 27 pounds.  Impressed I was not.

Right around this same time, I had also set a new goal towards our future in the islands.  I have always wanted to learn Spanish and as I see it there are three major languages in the islands - English, Spanish, and Creole.  Considering that Creole isn't exactly a dominating language, Spanish is my choice.  I had assumed that I would tackle this task by purchasing Rosetta Stone materials, but when I started researching the purchase of the product I found the reviews alarming.  A fair number of reviews cited issues in the software along with various other complaints.  These complaints combined with the fact that I simply have no time to allocate towards sitting in front of a computer to do the lessons swayed my focus towards another product - the "Pimsleur Approach".  This program is audio based making it very attractive for someone like me that commutes nearly 4 hours a day, staring endlessly at taillights.

I also had some unfinished business in regards to my sailing training.  In the early part of the year, after deciding to pursue American Sailing Association certifications, I enrolled in a home study course for my ASA 105 Coastal Navigation & Piloting certification offered through the American Sailing Academy in New London, CT.  This certification would compliment my ASA 101 Basic Keelboat, ASA 103 Coast Cruising, and ASA 104 Bareboat certification.  My original plan was to complete this course before we left for Island Dreamer Sailing school.  As it turned out, there was simply too much material to cover for me to finish.  After our Bareboat certification, it was suddenly summer and I simply put off the required studying.

ASA 105 Coastal Navigation & Piloting materials

So there you have it.  The week after Labor Day, I set a fairly lofty agenda.  In just two short months, I would train harder than I ever have and clean up my diet in order to drop my 27 pounds of extra weight, I would start aggressively learning Spanish, and I would achieve my navigation and piloting certification.  So for the past two months, every calorie has been counted, every meal has been measured for protein, carbohydrate, and fat content.  My day has started at 4:45am with a morning commute to the gym, and a Pimsleur Spanish lesson on the way.  After a 2 hour hardcore gym session, my work day started.  My lunch break became either a third hour in the gym, or a navigation study session.  My commute home usually entailed a repeat of my morning Spanish lesson, and after finally reaching home around 7pm or later, evenings often included more navigation plotting and calculations.

We are now just a few days from our trip, and the end of my allotted time to complete my agenda.  How did it go you ask?  I'm tired.  Mentally, and definitely physically.  However, I write this post weighing 26 pounds less than I was on Labor Day.  I have put away my 36 waist size jeans, and now comfortably fit back in my 32's.  Each day at work, I have very limited, short, simple conversations with Spanish speaking coworkers.  As limited as they may be, they are conversations none the less.  I am very thankful I have people to practice with that are enthusiastic about my progress.  I have to admit, I am very happy with the Pimsleur program.  I really have progressed much further than I had imagined I would.  And how about my ASA 105 certification?  After a 3+ hour marathon test, I was worried that my work had been rushed, causing mistakes.  I was even more worried that if I failed, it would mean taking that 3+ hour test again...  I am happy to report that Saturday morning I received a congratulatory text from Captain Dave Higgins stating I scored a 97% on my navigation and piloting exam.  Paperwork for my certification is currently being filed with the American Sailing Association.


With all this, I feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment as well as a tremendous need to unwind.  I can not wait to be at the helm of Fidelity, a 47 foot Jeanneau which will serve as our home during our time in the Virgins this year.  This will not only be a reward for all the hard work, but it will also serve as a stepping stone towards our ultimate goal.  While cruising the US and British Virigin Islands we will be racking up an entire week's worth of valuable operation time and experience.  Bring on the vacation...

S/V Fidelity's cockpit

Foredeck

S/V Fidelity's saloon

Step 1: Inception of a plan

Magewind moored in the Bight,
Norman Island BVI

A desired goal is nothing without a plan for execution.  Think about it.  Let's say you want to build your dream home.  Hammer, nails, saws, and wood don't simply start flying around in a flurry of construction.  Your home starts on the desk of an architect, who carefully and painstakingly devises drawings and specifications for your future personal castle.  Likewise, even the most ingenious plans lay completely useless unless a home owner puts them into play by supplying monetary resources and a crew to handle the labor.

And plans, life plans or plans to build a home, are not one dimensional.  They are complex, with lots of moving parts all needing to merge together towards the common goal in harmony.  Seldom does a plan go executed smoothly, nor is it common for a plan to flow in a linear fashion.  As the pieces come together, there are hangups and setbacks.  Research and dedication of resources are committed in iterations until all pieces of the plan have been managed and massaged into that one uniform end goal.  If executed correctly and successfully to completion, the final product of all the hard is a close version of the original proposition.

Currently, we are slightly past the inception of a plan.  We drew a line in the sand and started formulating a loose approach for a new life, a new chapter.  This first important step of declaring a plan and starting to determine the required pieces usually requires some sort of stimuli.  At some moment in time, something is required to set a new direction in motion.  For us, there were a few things.  We have always had the desire to make some sort of life in the Caribbean - eventually.  We initially pictured this as a plan for retirement.  As we traveled more and sailed more, a life on the water began to attract our interest.  Add in the stress and lack of life quality in Connecticut, and our thoughts of a move at retirement started getting pushed forward to an escape from misery.

Steven Ulrich and Debora Ruffe

Next, a plan needs a catalyst - something to spur an idea to life.  Enter Steven Ulrich and Debora Ruffe, owners and operators of "Magewind", a 46 foot catamaran sailing yacht which Sharon and I chartered last fall in the Virgin Islands.  If there ever was a catalyst for change, this was it.  Steven and Debora are charming and doting, and shower their guests with a luxury vacation for which life lasting memories are surely to be created.  Well worth the price of admission to say the least.  But above and beyond being amazing charter hosts, they exude energy and inspire positive thought.  During our time aboard sharing fabulous food, cocktails, and stories, Steven and Debora offered a new point of view and encouraged us to question ourselves and our situation.  While we had been meandering in a Caribbean direction for a few years, this was the spark that ignited a fire and made us look at our loosely gathered ideas as more of a plan, and less of a dream.

Group shot aboard Magewind before saying goodbye

Although at the time we didn't have all the pieces to a plan (and we still don't), it was clear that if we couldn't confidently sail, then there was no future in the plan at all.  Obviously, this is the first and foremost step we needed to take.  If we were going to be serious, it would be required that we commit some time and resources towards exploring our new found direction.  At first it was decided that I would learn to sail.  Quickly I realized this was a half-baked solution.  To be realistic we're talking about living aboard a 20-30,000 pound sailing vessel, on the ocean.  We're not talking about ski boats and lakes here.  The only probable solution was for us both to learn, and both gain confidence in our ability to live at sea.  Operating a boat of this magnitude is mostly a team effort, and add to that the possibility of one of us getting hurt at sea...  Both of us would surely need to get trained.

So this is where we would start.  Our little exploration into our possible future would require quite a bit of work in studying, a week's worth of vacation time for the actual school, and some monetary resources to pay for it all.  Worst case, we might fail in which case we would incur the loss of committed resources.  Second worst case, maybe after going to school we might decide we didn't want to live aboard.  All in all, not bad really - we would still learn to sail yachts which could be used for future sailing charter vacations.

The beginnings of a plan had hatched...

Welcome

After years of hearing the buzz-word "blog" and always assuming I would have nothing to do with it, a friend suggested I might use one to document my travels and the new adventures of which my wife and I are about to partake. After much reflection and contemplation of our current life, we recently began to turn our dream of making a life in the Caribbean into something more of a plan. 

Happy Hour, Saba Rock, Virgin Gorda

While we still view our endeavor as a bit far-fetched, we are taking it more seriously and starting to take steps towards moving aboard a sailboat in the Virgin Islands. Here in this blog, I will go back in time a bit with our travels through the islands, from our first visit to our current journey of learning to confidently skipper sailing yachts. 

At the helm of "Antiquity"

Everyone needs to start somewhere. We are on step 1 in what I am sure are more than a million steps. We may not succeed in our goal. We know that. However, we also know that if we never try, it will be guaranteed that we fail.


"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain