A few months after my husband Kevin and I started dating, he started quizzing me about how I felt about a few things. I am not sure exactly how far into the relationship we were, but it was at the point where it might be moving from someone to have fun with to something that might be longer-term.
One of the questions he asked me was if I had read the book Dove by Robin Lee Graham. I had.
I believe I read the book in 8th grade. I think most people who went to school in the US (and probably elsewhere) in the 70s read the book in middle school or high school. The book is a true story of a 16-year-old who sails solo around the world. When I read the book, it did not make me think I wanted to do so. But I was interested in the fact that someone could do that, let alone someone just a few years older than me. And I thought he had cool parents, because mine would not have let me do something like that.
Skip ahead approximately 8 years or so to when Kevin and I were first dating. Kevin said that he did want to sail around the world; the book Dove was inspiration and he had wanted to do it ever since he had read it. But unlike Robin Lee Graham, he did not want to do it alone. He asked if I would consider doing something like that. I don’t remember hesitating very long before I said yes. My thought process was, why not? For some reason the fact that I had not traveled outside my region, seen the ocean, or been on a sailboat didn’t seem like reasons at the time to say no, or even to say I am not sure. It sounded like a cool thing to do; people did it, so why couldn’t I? Why couldn’t we?
So, his dream became a shared dream. We bought our first sailboat shortly after we married, probably in 1990. We towed that boat to the Seattle-area when we moved there in 1992 in part to be closer to ocean-going water; we sold it in 1994 when we moved onto the Tao Min, a 36-foot Magellan. We spent 10 years getting her ready (I say “we”, mostly it was Kevin) before we left in 2004 for points south. We had a great adventure but did not end up sailing around the world for several reasons, the primary one being we ran out of money. We also had no regrets.
We now enjoy spending time traveling on boats we are not responsible for such as ferries and cruise ships.
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Hi Cathy, enjoying your blog! Maybe our paths will cross again someday. Sue & Gary Stephens, SV TRINITY (formerly of Pegasus).
Sue — great to hear from you! We would love that; was Trinity the boat you last had when we saw you on Bainbridge, somewhere approximately in 2008-2010 (don’t remember when we went there)?