Kevin always says he hates when I think or have an idea, and in this case, he might be right. It makes him nervous. So, you can imagine when I came home from a long run many years ago and told him I thought it would be fun to buy a sailboat and sail away, he rolled his eyes and laughed. Then he realized, I wasn’t joking! I will tell you, it didn’t take a lot of time before his mind was spinning and jumped right on board.

Kevin always dreamed about kids who loved the ocean and fishing as much as he does, and this would be a pretty awesome experience for us all. Back then, sailing away was a pipe dream. As time went on, we talked about it more and more, until it actually became something we truly wanted to do. We decided to continue to homeschool our kids and we read gobs and gobs of blogs, facebook groups and books. It was eye opening that people… families! actually did this… sailed away on a boat. It wasn’t until we started looking for used boats that we were really serious. I think Kevin and I always dipped in and out of seriousness, I mean, this sort of idea, is not a normal one, and is pretty scary. Spending vacations down in North Eleuthera, snorkeling, fishing and boating only made us yearn for more. Our kids spent more time talking about life on the ocean than you could possibly imagine.

In 2015, Kevin retired from the U.S. Coast Guard, and while we were down in Northern Virginia for his retirement ceremony, we spent some time looking at different boats in Annapolis. Our youngest was still young, and knew we were 1-2 years away from actually leaving, but wanted to see as many boats as we could to get a sense of the space for our large brood. Fast forward 6 months from that point, and I was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Having undergone a radical hysterectomy,

chemotherapy and radiation at the age of 37, was a swift kick in the pants for our family. We learned that it really is true when you hear that life can be cut short, interrupted at any given moment, sometimes with no notice. It was a real eye opener for us, and made us seriously ask “what do we want for our life? Our family?” and this is when the serious planning started to commence. Buying a boat and taking our kids away was something that we truly believed in.

Once we made the decision to move forward on our dream, we started looking seriously at boats. There had been one here in Maine that we had been in love with, but it was overpriced and the owner wasn’t willing to budge. We then found another boat in Annapolis, and we had some hesitations on this boat, but it ticked many of our boxes. It just didn’t feel like the one. We went back and forth on whether we should get a marine survey done, and serendipitously, in the nick of time,we were put into contact with a sailing family who was currently sailing their boat in the Caribbean, but planning to sell… and well, you know the rest, but that’s a story for another day!