by Michele | Mar 7, 2013 | Preparation Stage
Carter at the store with his green bouncy ball
As you may have noticed, we have a two year old little boy in our house. And like pretty much all little boys, he loves to play with balls of all kinds. We also have a terrier named Winston who loves to play with balls of all kinds, and who believes that every ball in existence belongs to him. I think you may begin to see the conflict arising. A couple of days ago, Carter found a light up bouncy ball in one of our cars that he had dropped months ago and was very excited to play with it. So, he started playing with his newly rediscovered ball and then left it on the floor abandoned a few minutes later.
Abandoned balls quickly get claimed by Winston. And so it was that when Carter and I returned to the room some time later, the big green bouncy ball had been reduced to a plastic ball surrounded by a pile of green rubber. I almost started crying when I saw the heartbroken look on Carter’s face as we went to pick up his ball and showed it to me. “Mommy, my ball broten.” (that’s broken) All I could think to respond was, “I’m sorry honey, Winston ruined it.”
As I began to clean up the remnants of the sparkly rubber, I noticed that Carter had started pulling the last pieces off of the plastic light-up center. When he had finished picking them all off, he held the ball up to me and said, “Look Mommy, now it’s a rolly ball”, and proceeded to roll it around the room just as happy as he had been a few minutes ago watching it bounce off the walls. I was completely amazed and to be honest a little ashamed of myself. My 2 year old had a lot more imagination then I did when faced with a problem that hadn’t gone the way he wanted. All it took was a little perspective.
by Michele | Feb 14, 2013 | Preparation Stage
Is this worth it? We think so.
Between New Years resolutions (those that have survived this long) and the beginning of Lent, this is the time of year that everyone is trying to straighten up their act. Some people are giving things up, i.e. fast food and cigarettes, and some are adding something like a new exercise routine. Whether the change is meant to be permanent or temporary, it is always a struggle to change old habits and the way we think about them.
Most cruising and simple living literature on the market today have the same advice for people who are thinking about drastically changing their lifestyle: start small and work your way up. Can’t give up your fancy car? Start by making your own coffee instead of going to Starbucks every morning. Maybe you’ll find that you didn’t miss Starbucks after all, especially when you see how much extra money is in your pocket by the end of the week. Here are just a few of the items and activities we’ll have to relinquish when we move onto a boat:
- Cars
- TV
- Frequent eating out
- Easy internet
- Steady income
- Family nearby
- And many more…
Some of these things will be easier to give up for us than others, like watching TV (we don’t). But others will have a major impact on us that will be felt more acutely. I’m sure when we are walking uphill to the grocery store, the eating out and lack of a car will burn a little more (mostly in our thighs!) and it might get frustrating if we can’t find good enough wifi signal to Skype with our parents on Christmas day. So, why would we go through all of this if we have to sacrifice so much? Because we think the reward will be worth it.
If you are thinking about cruising, and even if you’re not, I would encourage you to think long and hard about what you could give up that would produce a greater reward. Spend a whole weekend without your cell phone…yea I said it, give up the cell phone. Checking Facebook every five minutes really isn’t that crucial to your survival. Try turning off the TV for a week and go to the park, read a book, or learn something new about your spouse and kids. Ride your bike or the bus to work for a month, and save the money you would have spent on gas on a weekend away (yea, you probably spend that much on gas.) You might be amazed at how much you didn’t miss the things you thought would be a sacrifice.
by Michele | Jan 30, 2013 | Preparation Stage
Whoever first started scheduling Strictly Sail Chicago in the middle of January was a genius. Winter has never been our favorite part of the year (hello, planning to move to the Tropics for more than just the piña coladas) but this year has been doubly hard with the knowledge that we could have moved to Florida instead of staying here to pad our purse a little more. This past Saturday we were able to leave winter behind for a few hours and spur the excitement we’ve been missing for the last couple months. Just one day of being able to talk openly with people about our dream of cruising does wonders for our attitudes.
Three Cruising Budgets, Snapshots from the Life of Jimmy Cornell, and Perspectives from a Cruising Couple seminars filled our schedule. These seminars weren’t really intended as fact finding for us, in fact we hardly learned any really new information at all. What they lacked in new information, they made up for in validation and motivation. It’s one thing to read a bunch of cruising blogs and forums and compile a $1000-$1500/month budget that we think is realistic; it reaches the next level to hear the founder of Blue Water Sailing confirm that for us in his Three Cruising Budgets seminar. (He actually described four budgets, but the highest was labeled “Silly and Unnecessary” aka why are you even in this seminar, just go hire a 5 man crew for your million dollar yacht.)
The boats were what we really wanted to see. We won’t be buying a new boat when we leave, of course, and we probably won’t even be looking at buying a used version of any of the brands available to tour due to quality and dependability recommendations; what we wanted was to feel the size of the living space. Last year, we hadn’t done a lot of research into boats when we came and toured all of the boats. We left that day saying, “yeah, the smaller ones are okay, but I think we should look at boats in the 40-45′ range.” And look I did…at the price tag. There are hardly any good boats on the used market in the 40-45′ range that are under $50,000, and especially not ones that are close to being ready for ocean voyaging.
This year we needed to go in with the question “what can we do” instead of “what do we want to do”. It’s amazing how much that question changes your perspective, because we quickly realized that 30-35′ boats would probably do just fine for us and one little boy. (Depending on the boat, of course.) We are now looking for boats in that range with one cabin/quarter berth layout or two cabin layout (which is much harder to find in older boats that size). To be honest, I was a bit shocked to see how much that downsize of 5-10 feet slashed the price tremendously. If you search yachtworld.com for boats 38-45′ in the US between $30k-$50k, you get 197 boats boats to choose from. And let me tell you, they aren’t exactly the cream of the crop most of the time. If you search 30-38′ instead, you get 757. That’s a significant difference in selection, making it much more likely for us to be able to find what we are looking for in our budget.
While we had intended to stay for 2 days of the show, winter fought back and forced us to return home early with a nasty ice storm that came through Chicago on Sunday. We didn’t want to brave the ice in my mom’s car that she let us borrow – Thanks Mom! – because my brakes went out just as we were getting to their house Friday night. (Whole story in itself.) It seems that we will have to wait until next year to get a good second day, since last year Dan spent most of the day on his back on the floor outside of the bathroom of Navy Pier or puking his guts out inside of said bathroom. Even just one day though was enough to refuel our systems until the end of the dreariness when we can start sailing and diving again.
by Michele | Nov 21, 2012 | Preparation Stage
At the risk of going along with the obvious theme for the week, I’m just going to go with the obvious theme for the week and say Happy Thanksgiving!
One year for Thanksgiving when Dan and I were dating, we rode with his parents and brothers to my mother-in-law’s (Shelly) family event at her mom’s house about half an hour from Dan’s parents’. On the way there, Shelly asked everyone to go around and say what they were thankful for. Being the adolescent boys that they were, Kyle and Alex (Dan’s younger brothers) immediately started complaining about how they were tired of having to do this every year, it was so overdone, and they just were not going to cooperate. And so, she didn’t make them say what they were thankful for, but I could tell that they had really hurt her feelings by not participating in her tradition.
I would guess that the majority of American families have their own little traditions that make the Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays unique to themselves, and most families will have to face the day when those traditions are challenged. Sometimes this comes from challenging children, busy schedules, or adding new members to the family, but when it happens it is always a little disappointing for someone.
This year is the first year that we won’t be spending Thanksgiving with any of our grandparents due to family schedules and it is may also be the last Thanksgiving that we live within easy holiday travel. If our plans continue moving forward, Dan and I will be in Florida next year, preparing our new home for traversing ocean passages. Not exactly the tradition we are used to. Because of that, I’m trying to do a little extra savoring of the season this year. Being a little more gracious with our family differences, and a little more thankful for the time we have left.
by Michele | Oct 19, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Our first batch. Those strawberries were delicious!
As you may have figured out by now, I don’t exactly consider myself the “domestic” type. This would certainly include my cooking skills or lack there of. My father-in-law used to joke that my best dish was bagel-bites and that wasn’t really an exaggeration. That is why you will find “Learn to Cook” on our To-Do List page. My best dish is no longer bagel-bites but I do still have a long way to go before I could peruse a Julia Child cookbook with confidence.
At the beginning of the summer, I heard an ad on the radio for a local crop share program which ran once a week from May through October. I figured this would be the perfect way for Dan and I to get a taste of what it might be like to only be able to cook items that are readily available, instead of relying on out of season fruits and vegetables. We know that there may be a lot of new foods in our travels that we haven’t eaten before and so we wanted a little practice with finding new recipes and getting out of our comfort zone.
Well, it sounded good in theory anyway. In the beginning of the season, we were doing pretty well trying out arugula in chicken breast with sauteed radishes. We had some fabulous green beans and spinach, fresh garlic and blue potatoes, corn on the cob and delicious blackberries. However, those were all the things that we had eaten before and already knew that we liked to eat. When we started getting shipments of squash, parsnips, turnips and beets, we were significantly less successful in our enthusiasm. Mostly, we would just drop off our whole box of food at Dan’s parents’ house and go out to eat. Not exactly what we had hoped but I guess that’s life.
I’m not sure if we learned more about cooking or about ourselves in this exercise. We certainly know that we have a long way to go before we could live reasonably on $1000-$1500 a month, which is our eventual goal. Maybe we’ll just start by eating bagel bites and move on from there.
We are normal (well ok, not so normal) people that have a dream to see the world and live life as it was meant to be. We both have successful careers in the healthcare industry, even in this terrible economy. We want to break free of the current cycle of trading time for dollars and dollars for more and more things we don't need. So, we have decided to forego the fruits of our economic success and "retire" well before we are 30 and set out to see what is over the Horizon.