by Dan | May 7, 2012 | Preparation Stage
This sums up why we wanted to move there. Bay of Islands, NZ
NaBloPoMo asks “What sports did you play as a child?” Michele and I certainly didn’t sail. I played pretty much every sport an American child in the Midwest can play, just not sailing. We’re talking basketball, baseball, football, floor hockey, soccer, swimming, track and field, you name it I played it. So how did Michele and I come up with the crazy idea to sail full time?
A few years ago I had watched the documentary [amazon_link id=”9492259486″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Ice Blink[/amazon_link]… At the time I thought little more about it than “Wow that’s cool.” The seed of sailing (and crusing) had been planted however. As Michele and I became more and more disillusioned with money and “stuff” we began searching for alternatives. Cruising was not at the top of the list, surprisingly. We seriously explored moving to New Zealand. New Zealand is in the midst of a brain drain as most of its young educated people move elsewhere, primarily Australia. Because of this brain drain, IT workers (and especially network engineers) wanting to move into the country are on somewhat of a fast track approval.
We went so far as to tell our families we were moving to live the life of Kiwis… but what was the life of a Kiwi? Our primary motivation was to reprioritize our lives away from what is fake and towards what is real. We started talking to people from New Zealand to get a feel for what life there really is all about. We would still need to work full time, if only to keep our fast track status. Slowly, we figured out that the freedom we were searching for doesn’t have as much to do with “where” as with “when” and “what” you are doing. Time-freedom is hard to come by. Cruising fulfills both aspects of what drove Michele and I to want to move to New Zealand: time-freedom and exploration. The ability to set sail within a few hours notice for whatever port you would like definitely is quite alluring for the both of us. The time-freedom to explore those ports, as well as ourselves, is what calls us to the sea.
This post is part of our NaBloPoMo series. Follow the Horizon is participating in National Blog Post Month (NaBloPoMo). NaBloPoMo is for bloggers who commit to post each day in the month of May.
by Dan | May 3, 2012 | Preparation Stage
Good bye awesome car
Yesterday was a sad day in the life of my car ownership… I just sold the best car that I will ever own (previously of My Car and I went Diving fame). Car ownership and cruising don’t exactly go hand in hand, do they? Let me say that I like cars. I like driving, I like racing (not NASCAR, that doesn’t make sense to me), etc… I had a Saab 9-3 Aero with a 6 speed manual transmission. The engine was V6 Turbo Charged. That’s 276 screaming horse power in a sedan. I actually never lost a race, even against BMWs, Mercedes, Porches, Corvettes, and other less worthy challengers.
Hello future
It just wasn’t to be, however. Finance guru Michele figured out that we could save an additional $13,000 before our cast off if we traded my car for a cheaper one that we paid cash for. That $13,000 is around a year’s worth of expenses while cruising. Needless to say a year cruising the ocean beats a year cruising my 9-3 Aero to work any day… but it was still hard to drive off the lot leaving it behind. It is one thing to know and understand that following our dreams will require us to get rid of pretty much everything we own, but its another thing altogether to put those words into action. It’s bittersweet. I feel awesome that Michele was able to figure out how to save an additional year’s worth of expenses without needing to wait any longer before we cast off.
We now have one major To-Do List item checked off: pay off one of our car loans. We plan on doing the same with our other Saab 9-3 (yes, we used to own two…) in the future, but paying cash for our new GMC Jimmy kind of knocked our savings down temporarily. We will probably get nearly all of what we paid for the GMC back when we sell it, but we don’t have the cash to buy another car immediately. One car payment down, one to go, and a future to look forward to. Follow your dreams. Follow the Horizon.
by Michele | Apr 28, 2012 | Preparation Stage
So why can't I go in again?
Carter is our smallest-in-stature, biggest-in-attitude crew member. I’ll refrain from any 2-going-on-20 cliches, but this kid definitely thinks he is running the show around here (and he might be right!) He loves all things “boy”- trucks, cars, trains, and of course boats a.k.a “buhts” to him. Since he was only about 2 months old, the best way to get Carter to relax has been to take him outside. He will be in a terrible tantrum mood, but as soon as you get him outside he will play peacefully for literally hours.
Carter not only has the love of the outdoors going for him, he is completely obsessed with water. Talk about a boy meant for the ocean. He’ll splash in anything he can find: pools, ponds, dog dishes, and (as a mother I am ashamed to admit) the occasional open toilet. Yuck. He will even pour out drops of juice on the floor just to rub them around on his hands. He LOVES water.
One of our biggest motivations for wanting to live on a sailboat and travel is to give our son the opportunity to grow up with an open mind. To experience humanity instead of being just a passive member of it. To learn by touch and feel instead of by being told. Carter may not want to live on a boat for the rest of his life, and maybe we won’t either, but that’s not our ultimate goal for him. We want him to know that anything is possible, no matter what his horizon is.
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.