Embracing Freedom

Walt’s metamorphosis

Let me start by saying I am not new to the boating world; my family bought our first boat when I was four years old and I have owned boats for most of my adult life. Having said that, and as much as I enjoyed every boat I’ve owned, be it an open bow runabout, bass boats, ski boat or cabin cruiser, they were just boats to me. A vehicle to have enjoyable experiences.

It wasn’t until I bought my first sailboat in 2008 that a boat started to mean much more to me. Divorced and fed up with the corporate high-tech world, I decided to pursue a dream my dad and I had talked about but one which lay dormant due to his untimely death. I was going to buy a boat and explore the waterways beyond the local lake.

His dream was to do the “Great Loop” in the United States in a power vessel. I thought I’d do the loop in his honor then work my way down to the Caribbean islands and live a more relaxed life. So, I bought a cabin cruiser on Lake Travis near Austin, TX, and started to plan the trip. But as often happens, fate intervened and a friend asked me if I “wanted to just get from point A to point B, or did I want to have fun getting from point A to point B”. He invited me to go sailing with him on his Catalina 30. After one day of sailing, I was hooked. The next day I put the cruiser up for sale and started looking for a sailboat. The dream had become one of exploring the islands on a sailboat.

After almost a year of getting that first sailboat, Chaos, ready for blue water, I set off with a group of friends to cross the Gulf of Mexico from Galveston, TX, directly to Key West, FL, a short eight-day passage. I have tried several times to come up with the proper adjectives to describe that experience, but all fall short. It touched my soul in a way few other things have done.

After cruising the east coast of the US for a year, I sailed Chaos to the Caribbean and spent the next four years island hopping. It was a perfect life, late October to May in the Caribbean then put the boat away for hurricane season and spend the summer camping and backpacking through the desert southwest.

It took time to extract myself from the intrusions of the corporate world, board meetings, etc. but by the summer of 2013, it was complete. Now I had a real decision to make. Did I want to stay in the Caribbean or expand my horizons across the globe. This decision correlated with my own transformation. I love the Caribbean and the local people and culture, but I had read about the voyages of Captain Cook, the Bounty and other seafarers. I yearned to go to the south pacific and visit the places I’d only read about. But I wanted to do it as they did, by sailing, not flying. Moreover, I recognized I was no longer the high-tech CEO/board member. There were months when I don’t remember wearing shoes. The freedom reignited the feelings I had as a youth traveling the country in a van. I was well on my way to being a full-fledged “Sea Gypsy”.

Time for a true blue-water sailboat

That first boat, Chaos, a 2005 Beneteau 423 was a great boat for Caribbean island hopping and the occasional passage, but I needed a more substantial boat if I wanted to do serious blue water voyaging. But I had bonded with Chaos, a first for me with respect to boats or any vehicle. She had carried me safely across the Gulf Stream a few times and we rode out more than one gale together. Plus, she was more than a boat… she was home.

After agonizing for a time, I decided to sell Chaos and get a true blue water voyager. I had a lot more experience and strong opinions about what I needed/wanted. Many would say, to get a true voyaging sailboat meant purchasing an older, proven design then retrofitting it. But after meeting with Bob Perry, the designer of most of the world cruising boats of the time, and Thom Wagner, president/CEO of Passport Yachts, the decision was clear. Bob and Thom had a 40+ year history of designing and building voyaging boats and Bob had just designed a new line for Passport which was exactly what I was looking for. A modern boat with a traditional look and interior woods instead of the plastic then in vogue.

Conceived as a voyaging vessel for short-handed crew, the Bob Perry designed, Passport Vista 545 Aft Cabin was named Cruising World’s 2016 “Boat of the Year” as well as the “Best Full-Size Cruiser Over 50 feet”. Commissioned in 2014, Wanderlust was the first 545AC Passport Yachts built.

The beauty of working with Passport Yachts is the boats they build are all semi-custom, i.e., some of the systems like water tanks, engine location, etc. are fixed but many things can be modified to suit the buyer. After ten years and 20,000nm of ocean voyaging, it’s clear my decision to sell Chaos and buy Wanderlust was the correct one.

It’s also clear to me that sailboats are different from other “vehicles”. My science background wants to discount it but I do think blue water sailboats have a soul. They are much more than the fiberglass and metal they are made from. She’s seakindly and has that intangible extra that most Bob Perry designs seem to have.

[Read more about Wanderlust here]

Jane joins Walt on Wanderlust

The lure of sailing the seas, a rekindled romance, and a chance for adventure

When life throws you into transition, why not head to the sea? My thoughts exactly when Walt invited me to New Zealand to join him on Wanderlust for what I am now naming my ‘late(er) in life’ adventure. You see, I’ve known Walt for more than 50 years…I was the editor, and he was the photographer of our high school yearbook. Some might say we were ‘a thing’ back then, and we did keep in touch through his time in the Marines and while I was in college.  Life, doing what it does, took us in different directions: marriages, kids, careers, divorces. And then, an email reconnection while I was searching for a handful of classmates for a 50th high school reunion, and shall we say, ‘here we are’ or ‘perhaps the rest is history?’

Do I still have ‘it’? that elusive quality that lends itself to openness and a bit of risk taking. I’d like to think I’m the type of lifelong learner who is game for something new. I recall seven summer seasons on Mackinaw Island in Northern Michigan, where I made beds at the Grand Hotel and Cloghaun, shoveled fudge to tourists and joined my high school girlfriend as resident and caretaker of her family’s cottage on the back of the island. I bought my first horse at a little country auction in Ohio with little cash in my pocket and less horse sense than I dared to admit. After the first, each horse was a ‘step up’ and I, a better rider. Mackinaw Island, where there are no cars, only horses and bicycles to get from A to B, introduced me to the joy of riding and the pleasant solitude being at the barn - mucking out stalls, amid the quiet stomps and nickers of a content quadruped. Later, respite at the barn became a key de-stressor during graduate school and early career challenges.

Mackinaw is where I fell in love with the Great Lakes, listening to the waves lapping the beach a stone’s throw from the front porch. I enjoyed noticing the water’s cheerful and gloomy moods, and I was stunned by the beauty of the night sky and the occasional spectacle of the Northern Lights. Decades later I experienced the same pull toward the water, gazing out from the shores of Lake Superior, as the winter’s lake ice receded, and the giant ore boats navigated the channel, announcing a new season in the Duluth Harbor (Minnesota).

Somewhere between those bookmarks, I managed a PhD – the first in my family – and three careers…as a college and university administrator, a mom of three exceptional (my words) children and retiring as a leader and advocate for volunteerism in healthcare.

So, now, here I am and this is my quest: to reclaim a sense of awe and wonder and adventure; to learn and do something I’ve never done before; and to live simply and, in doing so, jettison some of the physical, mental and emotional clutter that 70 years have accumulated. 

And this is my goal:  to claim ‘sea gypsy’ as my moniker and to shout to the world (or anyone in earshot) – I sailed the Pacific Ocean!

And here is my hope: to be fully present in the experience, to embrace the challenges, to savor the conversations, the companionship and the quiet of the night; and to honor the people and environments we explore.

”

Ho, ho, me hearties, hear the sea's call,
A life on the ocean, the greatest of all,
With the wind in our sails and the salt in our hair,
We'll sing and we'll dance, without any care.