Let me start out this story by saying that it may be too personal. On the other hand, you may consider this the rantings of a madman. About six months after I bought my sailboat,
Surprise, a 1977 Pearson 323, I knew I did not want to sail across the Atlantic. Actually, it was after six hours aboard my boat that I realized that I couldn’t sail across the Atlantic I thought that in my wildest life’s accomplishments, if I could sail the boat from Lake Champlain in Vermont (where I sail) to Florida
—even if I only made it across the Florida state line
—then I will have accomplished something!
Given my skills and my prior sailing mishaps, I question whether taking a trip of this distance is a well though-out plan or an insane venture. Nonetheless, I made up my mind that the thousand-plus-mile trip would be the trip of a lifetime.
After six months, I knew I wanted to sail the boat down to Florida and have spent most of my waking time dreaming about it and taking what seems like smaller and smaller steps in that direction. I have rationalized it in my mind that if everything goes wrong, I can ditch the boat anywhere on dry dock. I am not planning on sinking the boat. It all seemed very plausible until I began taking the necessary ensuing steps to do it. This is what I am in the process of doing, and I am discovering that everything in life comes down to family, money, and boats.
First, the family history. I grew up along the New Jersey shore and as a child fished most of these waters with my father and grandfather—usually daytrips on a rented rowboat with the family Evinrude outboard; fluke and flounder, fluke and flounder. After he retired, my father bought an old fishing boat, but he could not keep up with the maintenance. His dreams of fishing whenever he wanted were soon replaced with a bewildering schedule of chores that was, in his mind, the antithesis of retirement. Eventually, he sold the boat and was relieved to go fishing on half-day charters off the Jersey shore. To this day I cannot figure out how a person who knew where all the fish were in the ocean did not know where the fuel filter was on a two-stroke engine.
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My wife, Ronnie, is working a six-month stint with the UN in Kosovo, the war-torn area of Europe occupied by NATO troops. She finishes up in June and her future plans are uncertain. She would like to get a continuation either in Kosovo or another job in Europe for the UN. Brice, my oldest son has said he would sail with me from New York City to the Cape May Canal, at the southern tip of New Jersey. My middle son, Jamie, is getting married on an island on Lake Champlain at the end of August. My youngest son is finishing his junior year of college and is praying for a summer internship anywhere so that he doesn't have to live on with me if he does not get one.
Next is the issue of money. What can you say about money that will either display folly or court envy? I’ll start by asking you to set the expectations as close to low as most people will go, at least the audience reading this. One lives the lifestyle one can afford. The more you make the more you spend. Ultimately with three kids, I decided to pay 90 percent of their college tuition. As my youngest son, Joseph, enters his college senior year I finally will have made my last college payment. The income I now do not have to spend on college equates to more time available. I can either keep more or work less. I am opting for the latter.
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Add the house to this. Through 30 years of non-shrewd house purchases and up and down interest rates, I will walk away with enough capital for a down payment and mortgage on another house. But, by selling the house and moving on the boat, I lose the $1,500 monthly mortgage expense. I am paying on the boat anyway, so the boat becomes the house and office. I have reduced my life expenses by more than 50 percent, have enough for a house down payment or emergency money and I’m living on a boat. I still have to work, but my work for the last 15 years has not involved going to one specific place, rather several places at different times. In order to continue to do this, even on a reduced scale, I need a computer, a car, a cell phone, and Internet access. I have all this.
The last piece of the puzzle is the boat. The only system that has ever failed me on the Surprise was the engine and transmission. I believe that problem is solved, but unless the engine works, I am not getting out of the Lake. An engine is like a _____ (you fill in the blank). Some things you can fix, and others you can’t. Backup plans are critical and so having several sails makes sense. Do I sound like an idiot yet?
I have been visciously fueling the national economy in the last few years, buying or re-buying all manner of parts that I feel I will need for the trip.
So as I write this, I have entered into a contract to sell my house in seven weeks, at which point I will move onto the
Surprise. For the first time in 30 years, I will not own a house. In June, I am going to Kosovo to see my wife whom I have not seen for several months. She wants to travel to Croatia and check out the sailing there. If nothing pans out for her in the work environment, she will join me for the cruise down to Florida. Ronnie has always said that the only way she would live on a boat is if she could get off it anytime she wanted. That precludes (initially) the Jersey shore ride and up the Delaware Bay. But we have friends and family in New York City, New Jersey shore, DC, Baltimore, and the Outer Banks. I have scoped the ICW by car down to Elizabeth City, NC.
I (we?) will return from Europe in August. Jamie gets married on Lake Champlain that month. Come hell and high water, the Surprise cuts her lines on September 1.
I figure that I am not going to kill myself going down the Hudson River and then to Cape May. I want to stop in Manasquan on the Jersey shore and be reminded of fishing from the jetty and all the rowboat adventures with my father and brothers.
Barnegat Inlet is the next place I want to spend an evening. And although I’ve never been through it in any type of boat, over Thanksgiving, I spent two hours in the freezing cold watching the inlet from the public access at Barnegat Lighthouse.
So how cool might it be to sail or sail and motor all the way to the Keys from Vermont? I know thousands of people have done it, but I see one big difference. I haven’t yet figured out what to do when I get there.
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