We Have a Sailboat

We have a sailboat.

Often times when I tell people this, they look at me and say “Oh? Do you sail?”

I respond: “I have sailed. Like… I’ve been on a sailboat while it’s sailing. But, no, I have no idea how to sail a boat. My husband is the sailor. But he’s going to teach the rest of us.”

I’ve been saying this for four and a half years. Over the past four and a half years, I have slept on the boat, eaten on the boat, argued with and amused my kids on the boat. I have worked on the boat—in the sense that I have done manual labor on the boat, and also worked my “day job” with a laptop on my lap on the boat. I have cooked, cleaned, laughed, cried, read, played cards, loved and fought on the boat. I have witnessed fish being caught by birds, seals and my own children on the boat. But of the roughly 40,000 hours that we have owned this boat, I have only sailed on it for about four of them.

That is all about to change this weekend.

The reason we haven’t done more sailing is that this glorious, majestic, wooden yacht was in need of a fair amount of TLC when we acquired her. You see, while we may have champagne wishes and caviar dreams, our financial situation is more like La Croix and goldfish crackers (gluten free please). So, when Joe and I started looking for a boat, we knew it was going to be a fixer upper (just like our house–but that’s a whole other blog). He has the knowledge, the talent and the passion for such a project, so I was completely supportive.

I’ll admit over the past few years I have wondered if that unconditional support was really just blind naïveté, foolish enabling, or worse, an indulgence that would wreak irreversible havoc on our family unit. But, even as the costs far outweighed the estimate, and the time commitment nearly outweighed my patience, I was convinced that keeping this dream alive was the right thing to do for our family. In this day and age where kids are spending too much time on screens, where our oceans are being destroyed and contaminated, and where more and more young people are growing up without proper life skills and self-esteem—this opportunity to be able to teach them self-reliance, conservation, and care for the environment, while at the same time providing adventure and true family bonding time… I mean, I was (and am) ready to go to any length to make that dream a reality. These are the things that kept me going, when I was playing single mom, while Joe worked for weeks at a time six hours away on restoring our wooden ship.

And so now the time has come! Tomorrow we leave New Jersey and head to Chatham, Massachusetts, where our boat Cygnet has lived at FirstLight Boatworks (previously Pease Boatworks) since May 1st, 2014. Then Sunday we set sail for Mystic, which will be our new home port for the foreseeable future. It is only a three day sail, but for me three days is a major voyage. We will not bring the kids with us this time, as Mama needs to get her sea legs first.

As the parents of two kids and two cats, taking a trip anywhere and for any length of time requires significant coordination. Who will watch the kids? Who will feed the cats? Are the kids’ school uniforms clean and did we really forget to buy extra litter, again? This trip is all that and then some as we have needed to do so much extra preparation for ourselves. Joe and I both needed foul weather gear (just in case), new boat shoes, and emergency communications devices. Plus, Joe was sure to get a stash of all kinds of random things to fill out our first aid kit. Things that run the gamut from sea-bands for nausea to jelly fish sting patches—you know, just in case. I hope we don’t need either one!

So, I think we are officially prepared, although, we have been doing so much running around and planning that I keep forgetting that I still really do not know how to sail. I guess I’m about to learn.