A Year of Yachtlessness
In a year that promised a reprieve from non-stop travel, we visited six countries, not including our respective homelands. Instead of putting sailing on hold, we vacationed in the Caribbean and helped some friends sail their yacht to Bermuda. We came, we saw, we ate.
Yet all the wonders and all the wandering seemed to increase our restlessness for what next. Peggy Lee’s 1969 hit song, Is That All There Is?, nagged me. I began asking myself some questions.
Does travel represent the search for what we can’t find at home? Or is our collective longing for novelty a backlash to the punishing routines that had for so long bound us in one place? Is ours a genuine curiosity about the world or are we merely addicted to movement?
In lives no longer dominated by the constraints of work and the pressures raising a family, perhaps our yearning for elsewhere signified a quest for meaning.
Yet a year of yachtlessness also germinated in me a deeper appreciation for Kevin’s attraction to life at sea. In August 2017, nine months after selling Monastrell, I arrived at the understanding that my husband needs a boat the way I need purpose. At the moment, we are both adrift.
Day after day, I watched his melancholic eyes fixated on his iPad. He pined over photographs of yachts the way other men gawk at girly mags.
Kevin craves the fresh promise that arrives with each new saline-scented day—the inspiration delivered by wide-open spaces and the infinite glow of untold stars. Despite his cursing, he takes pride in wrestling with sails and untangling the spaghetti system of lines and ropes. He is never astonished or terrified by the arrival of storms. He does not cower as I do. Instead, he greets the unknown with humility, bending with strength and grace to weather, tides, and geography. He passion for this life as strong as the carbon sails he so skillfully trims. But it is the endless fixing and tinkering, the daily unscheduled boat chores aboard his floating man cave, he loves best.
A land-based life had reduced my ocean-loving husband to a sedentary observer. It became clear he needed something meaningful to do.
In truth, we both did.
Unable to bear his bluewater blues, I sat down beside him at the kitchen table, leaned in, and whispered, “Buy it.”
I watched my husband’s eyes spark as though I were a genie granting a boyhood wish.
“Really?” he beamed.
Nodding, I felt a genuine smile lift my face.
Beyond the faint shadows of careers and parenthood, sailing has been our collective focus, our shield from the dying light. Six summers in the Mediterranean represented an unforgettable odyssey. The teamwork, the sense of adventure, the thrill of sailing into foreign harbors, I had missed it all—even the challenges. Life in the wider world helped me explore the undiscovered in myself. There, I met my inner adventurer, a part of myself I didn’t know existed.
Our decision to buy another yacht arrived as fresh fears for Europe swept the headlines. France’s President Hollande vowed to dismantle the Calais refugee camp known as “The Jungle,” displacing thousands of Syrian refugees yet again. Tired of propping up the European Union, the Germans demanded changes to the open migration policy. With the European Community at odds, cries of nationalistic protectionism proliferated. Over in America, daily Trump debacles proved equally depressing.
Uncertainty was everywhere, we agreed. Why not venture into the fray? Why not another lap around the Med?
“If we place the order now, we can splash our new Jeanneau in the south of France next summer,” Kevin said.
“France,” I sighed.
A new boat. A new itinerary. A new purpose.