Dream On

A year on a sailboat. What would that be like? Could we, a slightly absent-minded college professor and a musician prone to sea-sickness, attempt such a thing?

The allure of taking a year off from daily pursuits to do something totally different probably appeals to everybody at some time in their lives. I suspect, however, that most people never get any further along in their plans than a fleeting thought of escape on a particularly bad day.

Rick and I have dreamed about an extended voyage for some time. Rick has long had a fascination with sea adventure stories, beginning in boyhood with Treasure Island, later eating up the Patrick O’Brian Aubrey-Maturin series, and more recently graduating to non-fiction accounts of the 18^th century ship Bounty, and explorers like Cook and Shackleton. When I first met him, Rick would occasionally muse about sailing around the world. I come a bit late to the party, especially with my little problem of getting desperately seasick, but I too, have had my dreams of adventure. My ideas were always more in the direction of traveling on land, say on a bicycle, or in an RV, but pretty much the same, right? Ok, minus the water.

Rick has a sabbatical year coming up in the fall of 2016, and both of us have been dreaming of spending that year sailing to the Caribbean. Gone are the ‘round-the-world fantasies due to lack of time, money, and my mal de mer, but a year-long coastal sailing trip to the Virgin Islands and back should be doable for us. I'm gunning for Trinidad and Tobago! I’ve bought Caribbean guidebooks, found a book on fishing from a sailboat, and dreamed of beautiful blue water and white sandy beaches, with no violin in sight.

We both thought that my job in the symphony would put the kibosh on any Caribbean dream. It would be a rare employer who would let one of their workers go for a year, and guarantee their job upon return. Even though the Caribbean idea had been hatched some years ago, I was reticent to ask my boss, even casually, about a possible year off. What if the answer was a resounding no?

When I finally got up the courage a few months ago to ask if maybe, just possibly, could I pretty please…? the answer, to my amazement, was an unhesitating, “Of course!" 

Uh-oh… Holy-moly, what have we done? 

All of this time we have been dreaming away, not actually believing that our trip could be a real possibility. Now that the largest impediment has been removed, the whole idea suddenly seems completely unworkable. Rick is mostly concerned about his ability to do scholarly work aboard the boat. He needs access to materials that he might only realize he needs after we are far away from his library. Also, the boat and the business of sailing from place to place take up a great deal of his time and energy. Will there be any mental space left for his research and writing? If Rick were to decide to stay home where his books and study materials are close at hand, I would have to give up my year off altogether because we couldn’t afford for me to be without a paycheck.

I have my own concerns about a year in a small moving space; what will I do while Rick is working at his computer? I already find myself bored a great deal of the time. I end up doing a lot of web surfing (which truth be told, is probably how I would be wasting my time at home anyway), but the internet connections are spotty even off the coast of the U.S. Who knows what to expect once we leave the coast of Florida. Beautiful sunny days are marvelous, but wet, soggy, rainy days can be just miserable on the boat. There’s also my ever-present issue with sea sickness. And we both worry about what all that time on a boat might do to our relationship. Pretty hard to have a fight when there’s nowhere to get away. I haven’t yet felt the need to banish Rick to the dinghy for the night (or felt the need to go there myself), but that might seem pretty tempting after eight months or so.

Then there’s the question of what happens if something goes wrong with the boat, or with my son who will be in graduate school, or what if we want to change our minds midway through? My leave of absence is of course unpaid, so we will need to live off of Rick’s reduced sabbatical pay for the year. We can only continue to pay our mortgage if we rent out our house for the year, which also means that if things don’t go the way we planned and we need to bail, we will have no place else to go until the year is up. Pretty scary stuff.

On the other hand, this would be the adventure of a lifetime, the memories of which we would likely treasure for the rest of our lives. The water down in the Caribbean is blue, and the sand white, but there would also be the challenge and enjoyment of getting there and back. What a shame it would be to give up this opportunity, mainly due to fear of the unknown.

This summer has been turning into an experiment with which to try out some scenarios and see if a year-long trip might actually be workable. Our summer voyages to Maine and back have always been time-pressured and, as a consequence, we tend to stay in each place for only a day or two before pushing on. We’re both anxious to see what staying in one port for a week at a time might feel like; Rick for his ability to work, and me for my boredom factor. We’re headed for Provincetown today, and the wind is predicted to be virtually nonexistent for the next week. It looks like we’ll get a real test…

This is Me and Rick in the Caribbean (ok, still dreaming...)