Our motto is LIVE YOUR DREAM. We have been living this motto since 1989. Beware of the origon of a Dream. For my husband, he read the articles of the voyage of Robin Graham in the National Geographic Magazine; over a period of 5 years in the 1960's.
Over the course of several decades, he dreamed of sailing around the world, just as Robin had done. He took incremental steps toward reaching the dream; learning to sail, buying his first small sailboat, crewing to get blue water experience in the 80's. He wanted to sail, his dream voyage with a companion, not alone, as Robin had done. All the college years passed and he had not found a woman who was anxious to join him.
In 1988, on our first date, he shared his dream with me. He was startled by my reaction "Well, if I was to do that, I'd want to have a mountain bike with me." I embraced the dream and imagined myself exploring the wilds on a boat and a bike. We talked into the night of the dream and the adventure, missing dessert and the movie that had been planned.
In 1989, with the aftermath and damage of the Loma Preta earthquake and a forecast of an economic down turn, my employer, was developing a Strategic Plan to manage through the upcoming turbulent times. Management sought creative ideas for addressing the economic down. My boss thought that there was only one solution; he would have to retire early since he did not want to lay off any of his young and talented staff. I however, had another idea. I mentioned our dream, to sail around the world. I volunteered: "What if I took a leave of absence?" Surprised, but intrigued with the idea, he presented it to the Business Affairs Vice President. She agreed to the idea. She proposed that I could work for the next nine months to get my affairs in order, take off for a year, and return the next.
We changed our entire financial habits. We converted a dining room wall into a planning board with Post-its. We ate in, not out. The VCR became our movie theatre. And we commuted together, rather than take our individual cars, using every moment for planning and living our dream. We paid off the loan on the sailboat, budgeted savings for the voyage, bought gear and maps, consolidated households-- cleaned up my life as a pack-rat and moved on to a 34' sailboat. In between, we also planned our wedding and boxed up our office jobs.
We married and set sail for our honeymoon in the Autumn of 1991; sailing out the Golden Gate and turning left.
The tale continues. Our honeymoon was planned to be an ambitious sail voyage around the Pacific Ocean. However, in that year, we only made it to the western shores of Mexico and Baja California. It was an El Nino year.
Weather conditions had us continually adjusting our sail plans and our dream. Rough seas and weather made it nearly impossible to hold to a schedule or a timetable. Mother nature was surely in control. By the way, did I mention, I get violently seasick? My passion for the dream meant figuring out how we could deal with my chronic, over the edge seasickness, and still maintain our sailing regime of night and day sail watches.
There are many more tales of that year adventure, but the salient message is we discovered ways to adjust and to accept the agonies with the joys of living the dream. We came to accept the hard work of the lifestyle, washing clothes in a bucket with a washboard, as well as the days of swimming in ballet formation with hundreds of yellow, blue and orange tropical fishes.
We came home, August 1992, committed to DREAM again. Now our commitment is to sail further around the world as a family; the Captain, First Mate and two crew--our daughters, ages 8 and 9 years old. This is WIP, work in progress. Our departure date for Live Your Dream II, is scheduled: Autumn 2003.
May you Live your Dream.