In my 40’s my darling quiet, intelligent, patient and easy-going husband of more than 25 years divulged his dream that when we retire he wanted to sell the house and buy a sailboat to sail the Caribbean. Neither one of us had ever been on a sailboat so I could not figure out why he would want that. My first instinct was that he has gone crazy…then I thought okay he must have something neurologically wrong… then I thought this is obviously a midlife crisis that will hopefully pass… then I thought that he knows I hate water and I get motion sick so either he does not love me or he wants to go exploring by himself or with someone else. As the myriad of possibilities of why he had this crazy dream swam in my mind I concluded that his thinking is skewed and if I just leave him alone and not feed his misguided dream,  or encourage such nonsense, that he will come eventually come to his senses and realize the impossibility of what he felt he wanted. I waited and waited and waited… Instead of suppressing the idea he became even more obsessed with sailing and the sailing lifestyle. He began exclusively watching shows that illustrated the romantic side of sailing, adventure and exploration and I could see him becoming more committed to his dream. He also began to spend way too much time surfing the web looking at sailboats. When he was not working it became his obsession.

It took me a number of months to realize that this dream was not a passing fad but something he was really interested in and wanted to pursue. Once that realization hit me I became very scared as I thought “Oh my god what am I to do now?” He was always a very supportive husband and encouraged me to pursue my goals and passions. He spent countless nights and weekends entertaining the children as I did schoolwork for many years before and during our marriage. He never complained when I was unavailable to do something with him and he was happy enough to putter along side of me as I wrote papers, studied and took on more challenging positions. I knew he had sacrificed a lot over the years. The big question was “am I willing to do the same?” He never gave me any ultimatum nor was he insistent that I give sailing a try but from his nonverbal and verbal language I knew he would thrive in this new lifestyle. The question was “could I?”

In 2010, this motion sick water-phobic wife begin to learn about sailing on YouTube!!! Then I arranged a trip to Florida to rent a boat with a captain and try to learn to sail…. hoping that this would be enough to get it out of his system. Unfortunately (or thank god) it did not… I decided that I had much to learn about sailing and that I had to get over my fears. So we bought a 27 ft Mirage and thus begin our sailing experiences. Many days I was terrified!!! Eventually I began to enjoy the peaceful feeling of just sailing and going wherever the wind wanted to blow us!!! Then we bought our “forever” boat; a Catalina 400. It was so much more comfortable to sail and my fears diminished so that I developed a “healthy” fear in between my water phobia and motion sickness!!! I knew I still had about 10 years before retirement and I hoped his dream would be altered so that we could sail around our own province.

Unfortunately, my health status changed and I was forced to retire too early. With this unpredictable daily medical problem I have had to develop a philosophy of “Live life now” and if my husband wants to explore far away oceans than this motion-sick water-phobic wife would have to find ways to cope to live life now as we never know what tomorrow brings.

Fast forward to 2019: We are getting ready to pursue the dream. With my medical problems much of the responsibility will be on my husband and we shall see how this dream transpires. Byron, Duke and I are looking forward to this new adventure. I remain water phobic so we shall see how this goes. We live in Newfoundland (Canada -North Atlantic) and have sailed across Cabot Strait a number of times now for me to be more comfortable so it should get better from there (they say lol). We look forward to keeping you abreast of our adventures (or lack of) in the future. We will upload our InReach Tracker so that you can follow our progress. Enjoy and take care.