Beginning

A while back, in 1977, JoAnne and I were married in a tiny – ok, it was a HUGE – Church, St. Jude’s in Detroit, Michigan.  We, as young people are wont to do discussed the future.  I think I said I wanted a dozen children, and she laughed and we settled on five.  At some point we discussed retirement.  We laughed and thought that sailing around the world would be fun.  Then we forgot the discussion.  Until more recently, a couple of years ago.

Sitting in the hot tub one night we discussed retirement again.  Visions of “Little House on the Prairie” danced in my head, thinking that perhaps I might finally get my tiny farm house, a few acres, some chickens, and a horse.

She said to me, “I’ll tell you what I don’t want to do.  I don’t want to quit”

“Quit? Like, life? Quit work?” I say.

“No you dunce, I don’t want to quit life. I don’t want to settle down in some Little House on the Prairie in the middle of nowhere, I want to move, travel, see the world…” she stated as if in response to reading my mind or something.

“So… you want to travel…”

“I just said that…”

I don’t listen well sometimes…. so I asked more questions and she gave me some answers.

In the ensuing discussion we talked of RVs and vacationing the rest of our lives.  A once an old, long ago forgotten discussion bubbled up….

“How about sailing?”

“Sailing sounds fun, we don’t know anything about it, but I like boats!”

We were hooked.  We discussed the subject over many more days and made a determination we’d learn to sail and go from there.  Our plan was loosely, roughly, completely un-formed at that point, but we had ideas.  Ideas always lead to other things….