Sail Beausoleil

Well, we’re beginning preparations for a side trip out to the Dry Tortugas with a bunch of fellow cruisers here at Key West Harbour Marina, and then it’s a trip across the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. I know you all think we’ve been on vacation the past year and a half, but we’ve been working very hard – Shawna’s been consulting full-time, and I’ve been maintaining and upgrading Beausoleil so she’ll be ready. So it’s a well-earned vacation…

The Dry Tortugas are about 70 miles west of Key West, and only two people live there: a couple who manage the park as US Park Rangers.

We’ll spend about a month exploring the Bahamas – Nassau, the Abacos, Eleuthera, the Exumas. It’ll be a first for us – we’ve only been to the Bahamas once before, and it was just a quick three-day weekend by air.

More details to come…

I’ve now been on this water planet for 48 years. My only regret is that it took me almost 35 of those years to realize that being on the water with Shawna is where I belong. Yes, I grew up just a few miles north of the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, I grew up a half mile from Bayou Teche, and only a few miles from the Atchafalaya Basin swamps. Yes, I fished, swam and water-skied. But I took it for granted.

I guess I didn’t get it then – but I get it now. We began sailing in earnest while living in Connecticut. Shawna was working for GTE back then, and they wanted to transfer her back to Dallas after being in Connecticut for less than a year. I loved my job in Manhattan, but what cinched the decision to stay was a July 4th sail with my friend, Tom, on his little 27′ sailboat Veni Vidi. As fireworks were going off in almost every town along Long Island Sound, on both the Connecticut and New York shores, I looked at Shawna – and before I could get the words out of my mouth, she beat me to it: “There’s no way we’re moving back to Dallas. And not only are we staying, we’re buying a sailboat!”

So fast-forward a dozen years, and not only are we still sailing – we’re living our dream! The past year and a half on Beausoleil have been great! We’ve met hundreds of like-minded people while cruising up and down the East coast. We’ve made great friends – most who’ll be friends for years. The cruising mindset is different than the norm. In suburbia we can live for years next door to people and never get to know them. Cruising re-introduces one to the way humans used to live – in communities. A community isn’t a village, a town, or a city. A community is a collection of people who look out for one another. A community is where people appear, ready to help you out when you need it, without being asked. A community is a group of friends. And when you sail around the world, believe me – you need lots of friends!

Friends. Not “acquaintances”. One reason we haven’t been updating this website as often as we should is that we’ve both been re-connecting with old friends through Facebook. I’ve re-connected with old buddies from high school and college, like Avery – or “Bubba” as we all knew him back then. I used to run the PA system for his band. Or Greg – I literally haven’t seen him since we ran track together in high school, and I find out he’s now heading out to the Middle East for his current employer. Or Don, my old scoutmaster, whom we all really know as “Tuffy”.  As I type this, 28 different friends from my past have wished me a Happy Birthday – and it’s not even noon Eastern time yet!!!

While the cruising community has been ahead of the curve for years in building community, it seems that cyberspace, with websites like Facebook, is making good on the promise of the Internet. Those of us who were there in the early years of building up the Internet were a bit taken aback when it hit the big time commercially back in 1995 or so. Everyone was trying to make a buck. But capitalism also enables online communities like Facebook, and even other sites back in the old days of the Internet like AOL, or pre-Internet Prodity and CompuServe, to enable old friends to connect from thousands of miles away. At one time, when people asked my what I did for a living, I’d tell them that I built the “plumbing” that supported the Internet. Nowadays, I should really tell them that I was one of the fortunate thousands (now millions?) who helped to build the foundations of a world-wide community.

The weather forecast for communities is sunny skies, with a sprinkle of friends along the way. What a way to start a birthday!