Blue Water Odyssey

As we approached Hawaii, I began to feel a sense of accomplishment. Many sailors in small sailboats had made this passage before. Some had made it several times. Some had made it solo. But I was thinking about how many had dreamed of making an ocean crossing but had never dared to venture forth.  And then there were some sailors who flunked the course before they completed the trip.  Now here we were, two middle aged inlanders, living our dream, right on target.  How in the hell did this ever come about?  How did it begin?

When I was seventeen, a high school graduate, and desperately anxious to join the Navy before the end of World War II, my parents finally gave me their permission to enlist. I loved everything about that great adventure except for the military regimentation. Individuality is necessarily not permitted in the Navy.  All shipboard personnel must obey orders at all times without question. This tended to dilute my enthusiasm for sea duty but not for the life at sea.  I vowed to myself that one day I would revisit the sea as a civilian.  A third of a century later my vow became reality.

My dictionary defines "crisis" as: "a critical point or situation in the course of anything; a turning point."  Apparently, a great many people arrive at such a point when they reach their fourth decade of life. This malady, if it occurs, is referred to as a “mid-life crisis.”

I am not certain of the exact time in my life when the symptoms of the "crisis" began. Perhaps it was when my first marriage ended and my two children were in college. I was in my early forties; thanks to several  business ventures, I was financially secure; I had a concession contract with the National Park Service to build, own  and manage a marina on Lake Meredith in the Texas Panhandle;  I had discovered the exhilaration of handling a boat under sail; I had become addicted to reading sea stories or anything I could find pertaining to boats or sailing. Was I running out of years to live my dream of returning to the sea?

About this time, Clare was approaching forty. Her marriage, also, had become history.  She was a very successful legal secretary with three children who were nearing college age. Not only was Clare extremely intelligent, she was a very attractive lady. She had a cabin cruiser berthed in the marina that I owned. She too, was not content with her status quo and was showing symptoms of the "crisis".

Inevitably, Clare and I met at the marina. Initially, we had a clash of personalities. At a dock party with mutual friends, we had an argument about the advantages of sail versus motor for boat propulsion. This led to a moonlight sail on the lake where our stormy beginning morphed into a torrid romance. During the days that followed, I taught Clare the basics of sailing and she quickly became an adept sailor. We spent most of our weekends sailing on various lakes; and on all of our vacations we bare-boat (without crew) chartered in the Virgin Islands and other ports in the Caribbean.

After our marriage in 1975, our enthusiasm for salt-water sailing increased, and we began to consider a fantasy:  What if we were to resign from our puppet-like business hustle and bustle and become seafaring dropouts? Why not? After all, we were not getting any younger, we could afford to “drop out”, and finally, our five children had graduated from college. The Carter Administration with its high tax rate, high interest rate, and soaring inflation rate, had taken all of the fun and profit out of the business world. We could sell our business and distribute our personal possessions among our children, build our future yacht home, and sail into the sunset. Some fantasy!!!  It became our obsession.  When our friends scoffed at such an absurd departure from a normal lifestyle, we became ever more determined to pursue our dream. We reached the point of no turning back when we contracted to have our dreamboat constructed in Wilmington, California. The estimated time for completion was to be about eighteen months.