Turning point

After Christmas in 2011, we had a house full of family and sick kids. I believe,this pushed us over the edge and we decided to change our lifestyle and sail. Work, family, kids, bills, house, and money, all this stress just made us step back and say why did we end up like this. Unhappy in our work places and paying close to a thousand in day care for our son, whom someone else spent most of the day with him instead of his parents, also made us want to get out of here. Spending weekends running because we only had two days to get stuff done, grocery shopping, cleaning, entertaining, the exhaustion from this lifestyle was enough to say we have to get out of this before we end up sick from all this stress. And our employers could care less that we had so much stress, all they want is for us to be there at their beckon call whether we were sick, tired, or fed up.

Before Christmas we read about a family who left their home and boarded a sailboat, heading out to the world with their three children. We talked about it, I told my husband wouldn't that be great, he said yeah sort of, then we talked a little more and that was it. After the Christmas , my husband said lets do it, and I said ok. So we began our journey in early 2012, researching sailboats, live aboards, simple living, and sailing. We made certain commitments to each other, like our wedding rings, we swapped them for tattoos. Now we have a pirates bounty of jewelry we used to wear that we save for our travels on a boat, like a savings account. We also took a sailing class, learned basics of sailing, bought many books, watched many videos, then bought a small boat to practice on at local fresh water lakes.

Our practice sailboat, was exactly what we needed. It lighted a fire in us that we could not believe, we were hooked as a family. We were tested to the max, learning to dock without chewing each other out, cleaning up lots of vomit from a sea sick family member, and success after mishaps at the boat launch felt great. My husband and I reinforced our team work approach to life, we worked together to get the boat ready, get it in the water, operated it together, and had fun on it. I was sad when we sold it, but I cannot wait to get our next sailboat.