The Dream Awakens

November 7 is our goal date to shove off the dock here at Seabrook Marina.  Tim has spent his last 2 weeks cocooned in the engine room finishing projects.  I have packed up my sewing machine and decided I’m finished with my projects for now.  The closer we get to our “date”, the more I think back to the beginnings of this dream.  Let me take you back.

Most people who know us know that boats have always been a part of our life. Even before we got together there was always a boat.  From Hobie Cats, to a 28′ O’Day, and a 39 Beneteau, we bought our first trawler in 2000.  She was a 1988 40′ Marine Trader that we named Midnight Sun.  She became our condo on the water.  Rain or shine, summer or winter, didn’t matter.  We were on her almost every weekend.  One of the features that endeared her to us was her spacious covered sun deck.  Countless evenings were spent with good friends drinking cocktails on that deck.  That’s also the place where the dream began.  Over cold beers we  learned about this thing called “The Loop”.  People asked, “Are you guys going to do The Loop?” We had no idea; but as stories were told we began to get a tickle.  The tickle  grew the more we read, googled, and listened.  Unfortunately this developing dream was coming too soon for Tim and I.  We still had years of work ahead of us.  We had all those “things” that tied us to the dock.  We just weren’t ready to let go and so we stayed and loved life on land.  A new house on the water made our need for the floating condo nonexistent.  As much as we loved her, there was no longer a need to keep Midnight Sun.  We traded in our water condo and our dream of cruising the waters of America  for a dream house and a fishing boat.

Then life as we knew it changed.  November of 2014 we were visiting friends, Randy and Mary Steed, at their canal home in Aransas Pass.  Docked in the slip behind their house was a 40′ Mainship.  Now Randy had spent many an evening on the back of Midnight Sun with us and knew about our old dream.  And being a guy who loves boats and being by the water as much as we do, he told us about the owners of the boat who just returned home after completing The Loop.    Knowing how jealous this would make us, he even invited them to dinner.  Barb and John Albright told us their dream story about  buying their boat, Go, and beginning the loop despite minimal boating experience.  They spent 18 months looping and learning as they went.  We asked if they were to do it again, was there anything they would do differently.  The only regret  they had was that they didn’t take enough time. They would have liked to stay in some locations longer and go to places they didn’t have time for.  And so it all came back to us.  That dream we had tucked away, the dream that had once been fueled by cold beers and Captain Morgan was slowly waking up.  Retirement was no longer years away.  We could almost touch it now.  I had calculated  the Rule of 80 (In order to retire with full benefits, my age plus years of teaching had to equal 80)  in my head so many times.  I knew that I had only one more year after the current school year and then……  Tim could go whenever he wanted, it was just a matter of when.  But for Tim, retirement was just a big empty slate.  Now way in H.. could he retire and have nothing to do.  Tim has to have a project.  Has to.  Well, here it was.  Here was the project.  What bigger project can there be, but a boat?  All boats are a project.  This was it!  This was the answer to what was Tim going to do when he retired.  It just fit so well.  It was like we both got bit by the bug at the same moment and we looked at each other and we knew we had been bit.  There was no doubt for either of us.  We were going to buy a boat, retire in a year and a half and cruise the American Great Loop.

To be continued.