Broken dreams

[sailaboutvic]

Lots of cruisers have asked about sailing off into the sun set .
Not much written about people who have and returned before they plain to .
It may be interesting and helpful for them looking at starting there liveaboard dream to hear from tho who have .
Have you manage to complete your long term plain or have you had to cut it short and return back ?
Have you had to change your plain from being full time to just some months ?
What your story .

 

[BurnitBlue]

Nobody should give up a dream. Nobody. If life gets in the way of immediate accomplishment, then simply delay it. Plan to start again next year. But never never never give up a dream.

 

[steveeasy]

well this is going to put out my fire for sure.!!. Broken dreams, no way. For sure things don't work out all the time but we pick ourselves up and get on with life doing what we can. Im affriad I cant offer any examples of broken dreams, if they let you down, well they are only that and you move on. what I know now that I did not know 30 years ago is money really does not make all the difference to life fulfilment. might be nice, but in the end its what you have done relative to you and no one else.

Steveeasy

 

[TQA]

Year 16 of living the dream.

Took a sabbatical at age 43 left from Wales in a scruffy steel boat and stayed out 7 years.

Retired at 60 spent 2 years exploring North America in a RV then bought a boat and headed out to the Eastern Caribbean.. Now 71 and still loving it.

Over the years I have come across many sets of broken dreams.

The saddest was a young couple who had lovingly restored a beautiful wooden boat investing their savings in their future home. They were 26 hours out from Florida on the Bahama Banks when they turned around and went back saying it was just too boring.

Commonest one is an aging couple with too big and too complicated a boat.

 

[Kukri]

A useful test:

If you are not sure about some item on board, is your reaction:

a) Let’s have a look at it!

b) It’s probably OK; I’ll do it later.

If (b), you are heading into broken dreams.

 

[SV Kittiwake]

Our dream is very much unbroken, but we hear a lot from other people, some enjoying sailing, some not yet out there etc. We had a heartbreaking email recently where a couple had invested all of their money into restoring a big sailboat only to realise that they weren't so keen on living on the boat. They'd spent so much money that they could never get it back if they stopped, so we're forced to carry on. If only they'd bought a cheap little boat and kept it simple, they'd be in a much better position as the costs would have been absorbable and easier to recoup. Their lesson was that waiting, and saving up more to spend, isn't always the best option.

 

[RichardS]

The problem for me is that as well as loving my boat in the sun (I'm totally uninterested in anywhere that is not warm and sunny), I love my cars and working on them and I love my house and grounds, although not so much in the winter obviously. We also have our Sons and elderly parents in the UK, one of whom we have just moved home so that she is a few miles down the road from us.

Having a boat in the Med and spending a month or two on it every year seems to be a good way of balancing those different interests and responsibilities. It also means that we can be very flexible so if our interests or responsibilities change, then our lifestyle can be easily adjusted if we choose. Luckily, work and money are not limiting factors.

Richard

 

[chrishscorp]

well this is going to put out my fire for sure.!!. Broken dreams, no way. For sure things don't work out all the time but we pick ourselves up and get on with life doing what we can. Im affriad I cant offer any examples of broken dreams, if they let you down, well they are only that and you move on. what I know now that I did not know 30 years ago is money really does not make all the difference to life fulfilment. might be nice, but in the end its what you have done relative to you and no one else.

Steveeasy

+1

 

[Daydream believer]

The problem for me is that as well as loving my boat in the sun (I'm totally uninterested in anywhere that is not warm and sunny), I love my cars and working on them and I love my house and grounds, although not so much in the winter obviously. We also have our Sons and elderly parents in the UK, one of whom we have just moved home so that she is a few miles down the road from us. Having a boat in the Med and spending a month or two on it every year seems to be a good way of balancing those different interests and responsibilities. It also means that we can be very flexible so if our interests or responsibilities change, then our lifestyle can be easily adjusted if we choose. Luckily, work and money are not limiting factors. Richard

I can relate to that. When the wife & I set off we suddenly realised how we missed our family, friends , the sailing club & our home. Even the damned cat!!. When one reads books about those who sail away, one quickly realises how boring the "we walked up this hill to look at some knackered old church/castle/chateau etc."" Then we sailed somewhere else & did the same" can be. As for making new friends-Some people we met were so up their own a.. ses that we soon got fed up with the- how they "saved the bank/building society/company before getting out before it all collapsed" etc etc. We met many who really regretted selling up completely & could not go back as the money was going fast. We quickly realised that the living on £ 100-00 a week claims were rubbish unless one was living like tramps & one needed 5 times that. So after the first year we jacked it in - well the wife suddenly got on a plane one day & p..sed off home. She left me to get the boat home on my own. I actually enjoyed that, so now I sail Holland to Brest area single handed. Life is better because I get to go home every 6 weeks or so & she gets to play golf 3 times a week.

 

[RupertW]

We love having our boat in the Med for holidays based in a marina, whether it's a moving season like this one (Feb long weekend to fettle in Croatia, April 10 days to southern Italian boatyard, August 4.5 weeks to new base in Minorca) or last years ( 2 long weekends fettling, a couple of individual weeks then a 3 week round Adriatic cruise).

We both enjoy our work and my wife does work by Skype or whatever most days on the boat and I try not to work more than 7-9 months a year but we also enjoy meals and markets, fringe theatre and galleries at home in London and flew home 10 days early this trip as we had arrived at our destination and after 4 weeks on board got restless after a few days in the Balearics.

So although we've had the liveaboard dream for decades it's changing as we realise how we really want to spend our ideal life right now.

 

[capnsensible]

Perhaps because we've often worked between cruises, our dream is intact. Mind you after nearly twenty years living on our yacht, we now have a holiday let property. So as well as fixing boats, I have to fix a house too......

 

[Stemar]

I suspect the biggest breaker of dreams is when one member of a couple is dragged along reluctantly by the enthusiasm of the other. Living in a cramped space that's rarely level and often leaping around, with 1950s standard facilities - no washing machine or dishwasher, and no aircon in the tropics, unable to escape the heat or the damp isn't something that will make a reluctant sailor jump for joy. Jump ship, perhaps, but not jump for joy.I understand there are some bargain boats to be had in the Caribbean and Florida because of such dreams ending, but I wouldn't expect the sellers to frequent sailing fora once they got home.

 

[GHA]

Met quite a few along the way who found somewhere they liked and just stayed there, sometimes boat and apartment working locally.

Can't think of any who hated it and packed it in, though you won't really meet those in the anchorage, will you

If there is a common refrain it's got to be "Wish we did it earlier when we were no as old"

 

[AndrewB]

If there is a common refrain it's got to be "Wish we did it earlier when we were no as old"

True!

While long-distance cruising one does come across a number of people who are finding they don't really enjoy the life, and you know will not last. I can confirm the reasons DayDreamBeliever gives above.

The commonest reason I came across was not enough money. People who had been seduced by 'Annie Hill' fantasies of living on fresh air and little else. That may be possible in your 20's (or if you plan to write a book about how to do it), but not for most middle-age and retirees. Sometimes this ends up as solitary man of dubious mental health scraping an existence on a leaky wreck in a backwater anchorage (I've been there). As a rule of thumb, bluewater cruising will cost as much as you spend living in England.

Second, for retiree couples, was missing their home community, but above all, the lure of the grand-kids. Some cruisers coped with this by the husband doing the sailing with scratch crews, his wife flying out to join him at locations from time to time. But expensive, not very companionable, and not a good lasting arrangement.

 

[Wansworth]

Maybe some sailers in their retirement years thought they could emulate their adolescent hero’s like Hiscock but the world has moved on and even places like Spain have Lidls somehow takes away from the dream of discovering new lands...

 

[Kukri]

Maybe some sailers in their retirement years thought they could emulate their adolescent hero’s like Hiscock but the world has moved on and even places like Spain have Lidls somehow takes away from the dream of discovering new lands...

So you can stay at home and die, having done nothing.

Or you can try to do something.

 

[Roberto]

A strong text written by M.Pirsig of Zen and motorcycle memory

http://www.moq.org/forum/Pirsig/cruisingblues.html

 

[Kukri]

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

[Garold]

Over the last three years cruising to Greece from the U.K. (about 7-8 months on board per year) we’ve met several people at the end of their cruising period. Grand children seem to be a common reason for returning home, but also some had completed their planned voyage and didn’t want to continue long term cruising.

Personally I want to keep an exit route open so that when we need/want to stop we can.

It’s still a lifestyle that we enjoy, but equally I can imagine a time when we may want to travel more widely and boat ownership can be a financial commitment and a responsibility that may not always suit.

As a lifestyle for the first three years of our retirement it has been worthwhile, though some of the places we’ve visited have been underwhelming.

To add context, my wife and I are both late fifties. For us it probably was about the right time to retire and sail. It was a long held dream for both of us. However, it’s not our only ‘dream’.

Garold

 

[Wansworth]

So you can stay at home and die, having done nothing.

Or you can try to do something.

Maybe that’s the problem thinking oceanvoyaging or a trip round the med is going to be the holy grail of happiness...most people who get to be old have achieved a lot in there own way and have no need of a proof