Want To Be Sailors in Want To be Places
A typical three-day weekend in a marina finds many people on the docks working on their boats. Before I owned a boat, I dreamed of holidays spent under sail, with dolphins racing beneath our bow, or in lazy anchorages sipping cool drinks. The reality is that most of us, especially those with land side jobs, spend most holidays with sand paper and soldering irons.
This disparity between the dream and the reality of sailing carries over into cruising. Why else would there be so many boats that never leave the dock? Why so many boaters who share dreams of setting out into the unknown, but who rarely spend more than a couple of weeks exploring a neighboring harbor?
Many people fantasize about cruising, of leaving all their problems behind. They talk of not worrying about jobs or the rat race. Images of little umbrella drinks on a tropical isle fill their minds. Yet most never cut loose from the shore. They wear the flowered shirts, listen to Jimmy Buffet and dream. My son Tim calls them “want to be sailors that want to be places.”
The reality is much more difficult. Leaving it behind the security of home and family is hard. Leaving the known structure of our lives for the unknown of distant shores is almost impossible. Our identities are so locked up in what we do for a living that to leaving that job is like leaving behind a part of our selves.
Who among us really wants to leave telephones and Internet, television, backyards and paychecks? Who really wants to give up running water and flush toilets? Who is willing to live, cook and sleep in a space not much larger than a walk-in closet, where everything must be budgeted including electricity, fuel, water and space? The dream is of exotic places and poetic sunsets. The reality is choosing between power to make ice or to receive the weather forecast on the radio, between water to wash my hair or to drink.
So why do people cruise? Some people we met, did it to run away. Some ran from what they felt were unfair treatments at home, either in business or personal relationships. Others ran from tragedy or even the law. By sailing away they hoped to leave their bad habits or bad luck behind. Unfortunately, a boat is much too small a space to run away from themselves.
Others were searching for something missing in their lives. They hope to find the right cruising partner, the right business location, the right part of paradise to claim as their own. Yet if it’s missing in your life, a new location won’t help.
The happiest were those who set out because it seemed the right thing to do. They were restless to explore. They willingly chose to give up much of what other people find impossible to live without to discover what many of us have forgotten: the joy of testing themselves against the elements, the challenges of being self sufficient, the freedom to stop whatever you are doing to watch for the elusive green flash of sunset.
I can’t answer why some people cruise and others dream. I can’t even answer why we decided to cruise. I only know that the reasons we started are not the reasons we now are glad we did.
 |  SV Camelot off beach in Mexico |