I spend a good bit of my week at work doing graphics for marketing materials for the aviation parts company that I work for. I was working on some pictures this past week of a group of long hoses that our hose shop sells and my manager chose the picture he wanted for a brochure but made the comment that he wanted a longer depth of field on the hoses. "You need to get these fully in focus, Deb." he said.
It's funny how very small, simple statements like that can have a profound impact. Later that evening I began reading the copy of The Voyager's Hanbdook by Beth Leonard that had just arrived courtesy of Amazon. She spends a good deal of time in the early chapters talking about the cost of cruising and encourages her readers to honestly evaluate their financial readiness to embark on the path to the fulfillment of their dreams. After completing the chapter I opened a new Excel file and began to jot some figures down.
Somewhere between "Current Savings" and "Annual Income - Post Retirement" a remarkable shift began to take place. Until this point, my dream of retiring to a sailboat has been something akin to sailing along in New England fog...a vague image of a boat and shores unknown, with no clear picture of the details. In fact, the "dream boat" has been some odd conglomerate of catamaran and monohull, the journey somewhere between Cape Cod and the "Islands", and the time frame somewhere between now and "I've fallen and I can't get up...the companionway". Thanks to Beth Leonard's countless hours of research and personal cruising experience, and the volunteered information from so many of her cruising friends, out of the fog sailed a mid to late 80's 36-40 foot, cutter-rigged monohull firmly in the middle of my figures. Depth of field is still a little shallow, the boat isn't fully in focus yet, but my dream has gone from maybe...possibly...want it to be...to a budget in my spreadsheet. A budget that I can make work. A budget that can buy a real blue-water crusing boat. But what boat, you say? Hmmmmmmm I'm focusing...stay tuned.
2 comments:
Very kewl. We are across the state in KC. We planning on cutting the docks lines too here in the next couple of years. This year we have been busy getting salt water experience as inland lake sailors. Big year. I just found your blog. Have you found the boat yet?
Sabrina
Two weeks ago I would have answered "No" to the boat question, but I think I'm in love. I stumbled upon this boat over the holidays and if we could go now, we would be going to look at this boat. It's an amazing bluewater cruiser!
http://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/10688
Do you have a blog going yet? If so, please post the address so we can keep up with you guys since you're on about the same time schedule as we are. If you ever want to come sail with us on Nomad this summer, just say so and we'd be thrilled to have you.
Deb
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