Turning The Dream Into Reality
Book Extract
Why would you want to make a sailing boat your home and cast off to venture beyond the horizon?
Because it is an amazing experience on all levels and the best way to live life to the full – heading to the horizon in every way.
That’s what my husband and I did. We wanted to have our adventure, our taste of paradise, in this life, not in the next. We set sail and lived the life we’d always dreamed of. Our four-day stay in magical Bimini slipped to four weeks. We spent five weeks anchored off the beach at Freeman’s Bay, Antigua, one of the most beautiful anchorages in the world. Why? Because we loved it.
As a well-known pirate of the Caribbean once said: “What a ship is, what she really is... is freedom.”
Freedom from the demands of work.
Freedom from the daily grind of office politics and social one-upmanship, schedules, the normal, the ordinary, school term times, the school run. Freedom from traffic and parking restrictions. Time out to explore on every level. Time out for yourself and your partner. Your boundaries will become the horizons you sail over; your perceptions will change with the tides. Teacher, gardener, lawyer and chef will all merge into a sailor of seas.
How much would you give for perpetual summer? To turn the cold rain and grey clouds into sunshine and blue skies, not for days but for weeks or months in the Caribbean or the Pacific. And then perhaps, having explored in t-shirt and shorts, you may want to go further, to the cooler waters of higher latitudes. The world really is your oyster.
While escaping the humdrum is challenging and doesn’t mean a life of ease, even in the toughest times you’ll be in a place that most call heaven on earth. For weeks on end you’ll be somewhere that most people only visit for their precious fortnight’s holiday and you’ll have the luxury of not knowing which day it is, let alone which week. You’ll be cruising, dropping in and out of the tourists’ world as you wish: part local, part traveller. Or escaping the beaten path completely.
As JRR Tolkien wrote, ‘Not all who wander are lost.’ Whilst writing this book I delighted in emails from contributors starting: ‘sorry for my delay in replying – we’ve been cruising among islands in the South Pacific where internet is pretty much non-existent even today...’ or ‘thanks for your SMS which was received in a very rare moment of mobile phone coverage in Alaska.’
One of the many joys of cruising is the unexpected pleasures – be it the thrill of discovering a stunning, uncrowded anchorage or the exhilaration of feeling free to go wherever you want.
Freedom doesn’t mean release from stress, but it does mean stress on your own time, stress at your command. You will have to fix the boat, but you will be setting the agenda.
‘Hawksbill in the Bahamas’
Deciding to Go
So, what does it take to sail over the horizon? The excuses and good reasons not to go are legion. In the end, it’s about focus, chutzpah and sheer bloody-mindedness. It’s a cliché but it’s true: you have to make a commitment to follow your dream. Book after book, blog after blog, you read that once the decision had been made, the following one, five or ten years, was all about a focus on being able to cruise away, whether it’s in a home-made boat or on a yacht bought with hard-earned money. You need to hold on to the dream day by day and not allow yourself to be distracted or persuaded that it’s a mad idea.
Exploring the world from your own floating home allows for countless unforgettable achievements – those things that you want to do before you die. It is remarkable, having travelled thousands of miles, to sail into Manhattan or under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Even crossing the English Channel and motoring down the Seine into Paris gives you a fantastic kick. Would you prefer to fly into Antigua and face the airport chaos or sail into English Harbour, one of the most beautiful anchorages in the world?
The first sight of land from the sea after a three-week passage is intoxicating. Equally, be it the Isle of Wight or the continent of the Americas, as the land slips away again, so do perceived problems and issues. The fascinations and concerns of the everyday world become more and more ephemeral the further and longer you sail away.
Many people are happy with a predictable life, year after year, TV series after TV series, football season after football season – for them that’s life as it should be lived. For those who want to live a different life, it’s about watching Spain versus Germany with the locals in Mallorca or England versus France with the locals in Martinique. How about following the English cricket tour of the Windies under your own sail, island by island? Perhaps you won’t have all your family with you, but you can have your birthdays and Christmas on exquisite warm beaches, or spend New Year jumping around at Junkanoo, a carnival in the Bahamas. Every time you drop the lines there’s a buzz of anticipation about where you are and what’s next. You should be in control of your boat, but not necessarily in control of the life you’re leading. You’re looking for the new and unknown.
If that sounds like you, then this book will give you the information you need to make your life under sail a success. First, let’s look at what you need to think about and know before you go…
The author, Nicola Rodriguez onboard at Honeymoon Beach, Exuma, Bahamas
© Not to be reproduced without written permission from Fernhurst Books Limited.
Sail Away is written by Nicola Rodriguez. Nicola dared to dream the impossible. She wanted to see the world with her family. She wanted to have her own adventure, a taste of paradise, and most importantly – freedom. Freedom from the demands of life, and time out to explore on every level. With careful planning (and the gift of yachting equipment), her dream came true, allowing her to travel, escape and explore the world by yacht for 8 years, 4 while raising her family. She is a yachting journalist and writes for magazines including Practical Boat Owner, Blue Water Sailing and SAIL.