Uhm...you want to do what!?

Where do I begin?!?

I married a dreamer. His dream now is to cruise the sea.

Charlie and I met at 19. We were young, naive, inexperienced. Over the last 16 years we've had four children, moved a dozen times, finished college, moved a dozen more times, tackled law school, and have settled into the routine of work, kids, and life.

Law School Graduation We have a wonderful life. But we struggle with just doing the day-to-day. I get up every day and it’s the same: Make coffee, make breakfast, kids to school, laundry(mostly laundry-I'm ALWAYS doing laundry), cleaning, chores, pick up the kids from school (carpool takes roughly 1 hour in the morning and 3 hours in the evening...it sucks), after school activities (each child has one activity but multiply that by 4 and...bleh), cook dinner while keeping kids on task with chores and homework, quality time with the husband, then bed.

So...My husband has talked about sailing for quite some time and for our Anniversary last year I got him sailing lessons. He fell in love and then bought a Catalina 22. Over the last six months or so, he keeps mentioning cruising and sending me large sailboats for sale. He also sends me blogs and sites about other couples or families who sold it all and now live on their boats. At first I dismissed this ridiculous notion that we would sell everything we worked so hard for and sail around the world. I was not on board! We have four children who are in school-one that's about to enter high school. Is he crazy!?!

Charlie and his Catalina 22

After months and months of him talking about it, I decided to dive in and research this insane idea. I thought I would find a million reasons why we shouldn't do this, why we couldn't do this, why it wouldn't work. But guess what? I couldn't find as many as I thought I would. I of course found obstacles, but since when have we ever made decisions in our lives without some obstacles. Never. So what now? Well, I am a planner by nature so now I have to break it all down and figure out how we can make this happen. There are several things to consider...my husband's current job, our children's education, our home, income while we are traveling, and that's pretty much it but these are huge because it will impact our lives tremendously. If my husband loses his job, we are starting over when we return from our adventure and I am not happy about the thought of going back to living pay-check to pay-check, that was not fun. If the children get behind in school, am I doing them a disservice and impacting their lives? Not to mention they would be leaving all of their friends. And how in the world are we going to fund this adventure with no income while we are on the boat? Then there is the house, our “forever home”. How could we sell it or risk losing it? I just want to cry thinking about it.

Honestly, this is all a bit overwhelming and I am not sure it will even happen. But my husband and I are going to fully invest our time in researching this wonderful yet crazy idea! I will keep you posted.

Heather