Broken dreams

[AndrewB]

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;

Odysseus (or Ulysses) was already a well seasoned blue-water cruiser, and who can blame him for wanting one more try when he realised he was getting a bit beyond it. Hardly the same as a broken dream. I can remember feeling similar when starting my last long ocean passage.

P.S. Odysseus spent several years in the land of the Lotus Eaters on his cruise, which I guess is pretty much the sort of place the rest of us are hoping to find.

These days though, when we arrive to find Easyjet is already running in daily flights from Luton, while half a dozen cruise liners are disgorging 20,000 obese Americans on a community of 200 who are intent on denuding their island paradise of coral and molluscs so as to peddle tourist trinkets. The night club blasts out rap at industrial volume until 4a.m. across the anchorage and beer is ten times the price. Now that's a broken dream.

 

[RichardS]

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

Indeed. Ocean voyaging or a trip around the Med are but trivia compared to some of the really difficult things I've had to do in my professional life.

Richard

 

[steveeasy]

Well that's that then, The fire is out. I better sell the boat and scrap that heap of rust ive got tucked away. My time is done.


Happy Days!!


Steveeasy

 

[LittleSister]

Only 23 posts, but 1,200+ views in a day! This topic seems to have touched a collective nerve.

 

[escapism]

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

Oh yes, but as the apposite quotation of Ulysses demonstrates, there is a conflict regarding what we want to do, what we are capable of doing, and what it is expedient to do. A delicate balancing act, and if you get it wrong - broken dreams, or regrets

 

[Yngmar]

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 .

We're only on year two of actually cruising (unless you count the two years of me fixing up the boat and occasionally sailing before that). So far it's going pretty well, we're roughly where we'd thought we'd be. Having no long term plans probably helps with the achieving them. We'll think about where we go next year while we're doing the winter maintenance

Do we want to do this forever? I don't know. Probably not. But for a while yet - that's why we started long before retirement age. Money is still okay, although the western med was a bit more expensive than coming down the Atlantic coast last year, and we motored a bit more too as there was less wind.

Also, perhaps a bit unique to us, there's no "returning back" for us. We set off from the UK, but neither of us was born there and while we enjoyed our stay there, we have no desire to return to living in the UK (luckily we both get to retain EU citizenship). But neither are our respective home countries feeling like home anymore - we've been away too long. A common problem for expats. So the idea is to keep cruising until we find somewhere nice and say "that looks like a good place to settle down". Maybe

We did meet some people with overly ambitious plans (UK to Greece in 6 months with couple + 2 young kids) who had to adjust their expectations mid journey, but seemed to cope okay with that. I think that's key to successful cruising - your ability to adjust to whatever happens and make the best of it.

People often ask us if we're planning to sail around the world. I like to say we just want to sail around.

 

[sailaboutvic]

Broken dreams , we all had them at some point in our life’s.
But out of 40 years involved in sailing 28 of them cruising mostly in Europe and North Africa there been so many heart breaking story .
One I never forgotten a women I met in italy many years ago .
After reading sell up and sail her husband and she in their mid 50 sold there house they been working hard to buy for most of there working life and brought a boat to sail into the sun set , within a 18 months into the trip , the women woke up to find her husband passed away , stuck far away from anyone she know , with a dead love one , a boat she cant sail on her own ,
only thing she had was money left over from everything they sold and that was getting used up quickly ,
My last contact with her was she was flying her husband back and leaving the boat in the marina in the hands of a local guy to sell , she had no where to return to and was hoping friends would put her up , with no insurance to cover the cost she was going to be left with very little money .

Another guy I met , did almost the same thing within six months his wife just couldn’t hack it any more and caught a flight back to move in with their married son
He followed-her within weeks putting the boat up for sale at a silly price for a quick sale to recover some of there money .

In both case the people just got carried away with story’s they read ,
what some of us forget is book , blog, and even films have to be interesting for people to read , watch and buy , they not always true to life .

 

[TonyMS]

One way to help keep the dream intact is to cruise in the summer and go home in the winter - or the other way round if you keep the boat in the Caribbean or southern hemisphere. That way you get to see the grandchildren and landlubber friends, and can keep up with theatre and concerts, or whatever turns you on. And it is easy to revise the balance between being away and at home.

BTW, don't you ever sleep, Vic?

TonyMS

 

[sailaboutvic]

One way to help keep the dream intact is to cruise in the summer and go home in the winter - or the other way round if you keep the boat in the Caribbean or southern hemisphere. That way you get to see the grandchildren and landlubber friends, and can keep up with theatre and concerts, or whatever turns you on. And it is easy to revise the balance between being away and at home.

BTW, don't you ever sleep, Vic?

TonyMS

Morning Tony
One of them nights mate , set the anchor Alarm as we was sitting out a blow last night , got woken by shouting at 04.30 as a boat drag and hit the boat next to us then couldn't get back to sleep .
Ended sitter sitting on deck wait for the sun to rise ,
fell asleep and missed the sun rise .

temp changing , started to get chill in the early hours ,
Sign of a change on the way , ( from sheet to Duval )

PS Roy and Mad arrived early Sunday morning .

 

[LadyInBed]

Strikes me that "liveaboard" falls into maybe three categories, those that sell up, or keep a house as an investment and then live on a boat full time, those who maintain a home base and keep a boat somewhere in the sun then go and live on it for the summer months and those who maintain a home base, keep their boat in UK and go off cruising for five or six months a year.
I've never considered myself as a liveaboard but I do go off for about five months cruising (solo) and get the feel of what it's like to live onboard, and I like it
Being a 'late' person, I get up around Ten, breakfast, take the dingy ashore in time for lunch, use local internet have a wander, maybe some shopping, then 'home' for a siesta, do jobs, cook dinner then watch the world go by. A bit of internet, read a book and bed around One or Two.

 

[kof]

So I'm one of these dreamers. Mid 50's, live on my own, kids are almost done with schooling and looking for what's next. Could buy a smaller place in London or elsewhere but my guess is I'd end up staring at 4 walls for 95% of the month.

So what's the plan? Get a boat, place it in the med and live on it. Kids have a years break from school/college so take them off cruising the med for the summer, then across the Atlantic in November and spend the winter cruising the Caribbean, then back to the Med next summer. Maybe do the same again, maybe not.

Now I'm not new to sailing. Been sailing since I was 9 and had a 40 footer previously which I raced and cruised - have many miles under my belt. But I know this is different. Living on a boat, even a roomy one, can be trying and is no bed of roses but I'm looking forward to the upside - Looking forward to the passages, to exploring , to meeting other cruisers and to not only teaching my kids how to sail, but to be good sailors. So the boat purchase is under way - I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford the boat I want, and not have to settle for something less. It also means that life on the hook will be a lot more comfortable than my last boat.

I may do this for the next 10 years or maybe I'll get tired after 5 and pack it in, sell the boat and retire to some small apartment and get a dog. Who's knows. I know there will be times that I will be stuck at anchor for weeks, waiting for the kids or friends to show up and go sailing, but I suspect the view from that anchor will be a hell of a lot better than some apartment in some anonymous city.

 

[Wansworth]

Strikes me that "liveaboard" falls into maybe three categories, those that sell up, or keep a house as an investment and then live on a boat full time, those who maintain a home base and keep a boat somewhere in the sun then go and live on it for the summer months and those who maintain a home base, keep their boat in UK and go off cruising for five or six months a year.
I've never considered myself as a liveaboard but I do go off for about five months cruising (solo) and get the feel of what it's like to live onboard, and I like it
Being a 'late' person, I get up around Ten, breakfast, take the dingy ashore in time for lunch, use local internet have a wander, maybe some shopping, then 'home' for a siesta, do jobs, cook dinner then watch the world go by. A bit of internet, read a book and bed around One or Two.

So you have thrown off the shackles of the white Anglo Saxon work ethic!

 

[LadyInBed]

So you have thrown off the shackles of the white Anglo Saxon work ethic!

I'm not sure that I ever had one of those :ambivalence:

 

[TQA]

Most of the people I know that enjoy the cruising life would subscribe to this.