It all began in Bonaire, a small Dutch owned island located not too far off the coast of Venezuela, in 2001. My wife Kristin and I are SCUBA divers, and Bonaire is a SCUBA diver’s paradise. One afternoon after a day of diving, we were having drinks by the water’s edge at the Buddy Dive resort’s bar enjoying the view of the water and the many sailboats anchored nearby. Kristin asked me if when we retired if I would ever be interested in doing something like cruising the world on a sailboat. My reply was, of course! Now, at this point in my life, the only sailboat I’d ever been on was of the booze cruise variety where the sails were only deployed to make the half looped tourists feel like they really were sailing. Somewhere in the conversation, she mentioned that if we were going to do this, then we would need to know how to sail. We discussed this dilemma for a bit, when I finally told her, “when we get back home, if you’ll find someone to teach us to sail, I’ll learn to sail”. At that time, we lived in Collierville, TN, a suburb of Memphis, and Pickwick Lake on the TN river wasn’t too far away. She accepted the challenge and after we got back home she found an extremely patient and trusting man, Ned Smith, to teach us how to sail. He had a small, and very fast racing sailboat that we spent the weekend learning the basics on. He even sent us out on our own that Sunday afternoon. (Remember I said he was a very trusting man?). Anyway, long story short, I loved it, and vowed that I was going to own a sailboat, and it wasn’t going to be very long before I owned one.
The search began. Kristin was envisioning a small Hobie Cat style sailboat, but my sights were on something a little bigger. We ended up finding a 23 ft. Santana sailboat that we could actually sleep on, and it even had a porta-potty on board! Very soon, the need to be able to stand up inside the boat started becoming a priority, so we ended up buying a 34 ft. Catalina. After a fire destroyed that sailboat, we moved to a Catalina 380.
Now, during this time, we kept our boats at Aqua Yacht Harbor, which is near Iuka, MS on the Tennessee River. It is also right at the entrance to the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway. Every year, starting mid summer through fall, we kept meeting these folks that were passing through, doing something called the Great Loop. The more I heard about it, the more intrigued I became. (For anyone that doesn’t know what the Great Loop is, just google it, there are mountains of information on it). Anyway, I told my wife that someday we were going to do that, to which her answer was always a good-natured, sarcastic laugh. A job transfer moved us to the Houston, TX area, we had our Catalina 380 shipped to Galveston Bay, and our sailing continued. Unfortunately for Kristin, cancer returned for her a couple years after getting the boat to Galveston Bay. (She has now been cancer free for 12 years). It was going to be a long year, and not much if any boat usage was going to happen. We really hadn’t discussed the sale of our Catalina 380, but as I was sitting in Houston’s rush hour traffic coming home from work one Friday afternoon, my phone rang, and it was a yacht broker. Someone had seen our boat, talked to some of our dock neighbors and found out about our situation and he was interested in buying the boat. The broker wanted to know if we were interested in selling, to which I answered, no. She replied that if I changed my mind to give her a call back. I got home, told my wife about it, and we had a laugh about it and didn’t think anymore about it…..yeah, right. I had laid awake that night thinking about things, and apparently Kristin had too. We talked about selling the boat the next day, and it seemed to really make sense. For the next year, we would be paying dockage fees, insurance and electrical usage on a boat that we weren’t going to be able to use much at all if any. And anyone that has been around boats knows that if you don’t use ’em and maintain ’em, they go to crap very quickly. I called the broker back on Monday, a deal was made within a couple weeks and we were boatless.
Fast forward a few years. Another job transfer had moved us to Franklin, TN, a suburb of Nashville. Still not too far from the TN River, just a different lake. And understand that throughout all these years I had been constantly talking about doing the Great Loop for a year and after that, spending the winters in the Caribbean, and the summers up in Canada. I wanted to follow 80 degrees. Just like my father before me, I absolutely HATE cold weather. At this point it had been about 8 or 9 years since we’d owned a boat, but I still was pushing a plan to live aboard for a few years after retirement. And retirement was approaching fast. One beautiful Sunday spring day, we took a ride in the convertible and ended up stopping at a marina on a lake nearby. We walked the docks, had lunch, and headed home. Over the next few weeks, Kristin kept talking about the marina, and the boats as well as the boating life. I said, “you’re actually missing the boating life, aren’t you?”. She replied that indeed she was. A light came on in my head, and it was shining brightly. Over the next year or two, we talked a lot about it, and she finally decided that it was something she was interested in doing, the Great Loop year 1, then (if I can make sure she’s happy), do the Caribbean and Canada thing after that. I will tell you that she made me a very happy man over the course of that decision! Those are the beginnings of this dream of mine, and somewhat reluctant tolerance of hers. My goal is to make her wonder why she ever resisted in the first place!