October 2004
It has been a long two years. For the most part, every move we made was the wrong move. The beginning of "the troubles" was leaving the boat. We loved living on our boat, life on the water was all we had known for eight years. It was all that we had wanted. Virtually every night we crawled into our cabin and talked about how much we loved everything about our lives.
And then we gave it up.
We bought a house in 2002 thinking that it would
be the smart thing to do. Our lives have been going downhill ever since.
Most everything that has happened had nothing to do with the house but still, we
had lost our refuge from the storm. Escaping to the house was no escape at
all. It was a reminder of how very much we had gone wrong.
So now, almost exactly two years later we are trying to get back on the right track. We are putting the house up for sale and moving back to the home that we love. Unfortunately there is some truth to the adage that you can't go home again. The marina-home that we will return to is nothing like the one we left. An angry and aggressive tempest of development has taken hold and our quiet little place is no more. Prices have risen to the point that most of the true characters - the people known only by their first names or just their boat names - are now gone. Condominiums are rising where palm trees and weeds once reigned. Even the name of the place has changed.
The feeling, however, is still there. It doesn't matter what the marina is named, at night Chelle and I can crawl into our berth and kick our feet under the blankets and be glad that we are home. We can get in touch with the world again through our SSB radio, we will once again know the weather because it is important. We will, once again, become in tune with the things that are important to us.
We now have three hulls in the boatyard and we have hope. Hetty Too is the newest addition - it is a neglected 1976 Hunter 27 that will become the bedroom for our girls. Michelle and I will return to Wings. Incredibly, the girls will be physically closer to us on another boat than they are right now in our split bedroom ranch style house. They will have the opportunity to learn the things important in life and to ignore the temptations of the things that are irrelevant. There are no big screen TVs on these boats. But it is important to be responsible for filling the water tank. If that didn't make sense to you, all I can say is that perhaps you need to jump out of the safety net as well.
OK, that sounded a bit sarcastic but it wasn't meant to be. As they say, "Your mileage may vary" and it is true. Everyone has their own pace, their own desires and their own dreams. We were fortunate to have lived ours for eight incredible years. We are fortunate to be able to go back to it now.
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