It all started back in 2014 when Kelly attended a party at Chris’s house. There was a date to see a movie a few days later and soon, they were living together. Then came dogs and a new house on a lake. The lake house led to a boat. Vacations in the Bahamas and Mexico led to chartering a monohull in the BVIs in 2018 and a catamaran in 2019. Kelly fell in love with Anegada and Chris claimed that “all of the cruising world is like that”.
Kelly listened to Chris talk on and on about cruising and what an adventure it would be. Kelly was all about the traveling, seeing new places and meeting new people (particularly in tropical areas) but wasn’t sure she liked the idea of crossing oceans. Sailing from Miami to the Caribbean stopping nightly in places like the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic didn’t bother her. Too much. The stopping was fine. Offshore overnight sailing was the challenge. She could handle a day or two but really wasn’t happy with the idea of 20+ days between the Galapagos and the Marquesas. Maybe she could work up to that. Maybe.
One thing she was certain of: she was catamaran sailor.
A plan was hatched. Neither was really in a position to “take a few years off from work” to go sailing. The decision was made to set a date years off in the future as “the departure date”, to spend the intervening years saving money, researching sailing, going on a few charters, taking sailing classes and going to boat shows. The wisdom of “go now” was rationalized away with the knowledge that early retirement was a possibility and not that far off in the future.
With COVID and the advent of working remotely, the idea of working from a boat was a possibility. So, the plan was modified to still retire early but to spend a few years working from the boat while exploring the east coast and the Bahamas. Retirement was not that far away… Only a few years “if the stock market cooperates”.
While waiting for “early retirement”, Chris spent his time doing research on everything that would be needed for cruising. He read many “preparing for cruising” books (his favorites being Van Sant and Leonard). He created spread sheets so large that they challenged Execl to function, which caused the creation of more, smaller spread sheets. He read sailing blogs. He spent hours looking at Windy.com, Noonsite, Active Captain and Google Earth, planning where he wanted to go. He researched immigration procedures and grew to loathe the Schengen Shuffle. And of course, he regularly cataloged the available sailboats on the market to try to identify trends and isolate “the best time to buy”. What it would eventually cost to purchase and outfit a boat, that was another spread sheet.
