Full Circle
They say that the two happiest days in a boater’s life are the day you buy your boat and the day you sell it. Well, we have come full circle… Chiron, our 47-foot sailboat has been sold. I won’t say that it is one of our happiest days. There is a certain sense of loss. Chiron was more than just a boat to us; it represented an adventure, discovery, and a transforming experience. The day we loosened Chiron’s mooring lines and sailed away from the dock was the beginning of a new life.
This morning I returned to the pages of our as yet unpublished book, “Winter Passage.” It relates the story of the three years that Bob and I lived and sailed with Chiron. I reread the Introduction that I had written… the words and reflections that flowed elegantly in a literary sense. Then I read Bob’s Preface and thought, “His words capture the essence of our experience far better than all my carefully rendered lines of prose.” And so it does.
Preface
A LOVE STORY
We have tried to describe these months aboard Chiron in different ways at different times. But when you get right down to it, I think that this is a love story - about two people, a boat and a couple of cats. We set off looking for adventure and find each other. And just maybe learn a lot about ourselves as well. Sure we have some real adventures. But the important part is discovering about what it means to care and respect and trust. Not just nice words - the real stuff - put to the test - when not being true might mean being dead. So you get along together in close quarters, you come to know your own strengths and weaknesses about as well as your partners, you burn through all of the small stuff from the past and you fall in love again. And again. ... Bob
When Chiron sails out of Bellingham Bay, it will be in different hands. We will be watching from the shore. But we know what it is like to “raise our sails and dip and soar in the breeze.” I am not the same woman who sailed out of Yaquina Bay in 1997, following a dream. As Miriam Beard writes, “Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” Thank you Chiron for taking us there. Bon voyage.
Bob and Morningstar in 1996, at haulout for boat survey
… PLM
This morning I returned to the pages of our as yet unpublished book, “Winter Passage.” It relates the story of the three years that Bob and I lived and sailed with Chiron. I reread the Introduction that I had written… the words and reflections that flowed elegantly in a literary sense. Then I read Bob’s Preface and thought, “His words capture the essence of our experience far better than all my carefully rendered lines of prose.” And so it does.
Preface
A LOVE STORY
We have tried to describe these months aboard Chiron in different ways at different times. But when you get right down to it, I think that this is a love story - about two people, a boat and a couple of cats. We set off looking for adventure and find each other. And just maybe learn a lot about ourselves as well. Sure we have some real adventures. But the important part is discovering about what it means to care and respect and trust. Not just nice words - the real stuff - put to the test - when not being true might mean being dead. So you get along together in close quarters, you come to know your own strengths and weaknesses about as well as your partners, you burn through all of the small stuff from the past and you fall in love again. And again. ... Bob
When Chiron sails out of Bellingham Bay, it will be in different hands. We will be watching from the shore. But we know what it is like to “raise our sails and dip and soar in the breeze.” I am not the same woman who sailed out of Yaquina Bay in 1997, following a dream. As Miriam Beard writes, “Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” Thank you Chiron for taking us there. Bon voyage.
Bob and Morningstar in 1996, at haulout for boat survey… PLM
posted by Looking for Hope | 2:19 PM
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