Dock Lines are Strong

Dock Lines are Strong

The afternoon meeting is going on way too long. The meeting was bullshit before it started, and now it is only more ripe bullshit. Your laptop is open, checking on facebook to get through the meeting; a friend of yours is posting amazing travel photos from something tropical. You are having a hard time concentrating on the director-of-nothing’s extortions.

You are looking at sails full of wind. The image is a beach with a couple running hand in hand, a sailboat in the background. They have the white cotton flowing beach clothes. You can feel the cool, just damp sand scrunch in your toes.

P.M. goes on a particularly impassioned discourse that makes no sense when you try to focus on the active dichotomies.

You think to yourself, “I like fish, I could eat fish!”

That was me in 2011.

In 2012 I bought Ad Astra — a Lagoon 450 sailing catamaran. We took delivery of her in La Rochelle, France and had a wonderful time sailing the Atlantic coast of France, crossed the Bay of Biscay to Spain, then on to Porto, Portugal. Three months aboard, where we walked and bicycled in La Rochelle, visited so many castles and slowed down to eat meals together and first experience homeschooling. It was a magical time.

Today is May 18th, 2016 — four years since I bought the boat, but only now are we going to set sail full-time. What happened? We saw an opportunity to start another game company — Bee Cave Games. We fell in love with Austin, Texas, and the wonderful and amazing Austinites. We bought a house, raised chickens, bees, built a fantastic treehouse, hosted dozens of parties, brewed 100 gallons of IPA beer on an open fire. We competed in Science Olympiad and Mixed Martial Arts. We gained many skills and developed amazing friendships. But at the end of day, the hardest thing to do is to is slip the dock lines.

What does it take to go sailing full-time?

What boat do you buy? A mono-hull or a catamaran? How big? Do you sail at night? Do you hire a captain? How much money does it take? Will you live off of investment money or continue to work? What about the weather? Will you sail around the world? Will you have a satellite phone? How will you stay connected? How do you get cash? Are you carrying a gun? What about pirates? What about social for your kids? Will you stay anywhere for longish periods of time? What sort of homeschool program will you use for your kids?

I have had all of these questions. I know the answer to many of them now, others will resolve over time. There are many other questions.

With this blog I am going to share with you as openly as possible, our process for slipping the dock-lines, and then how we make it as a family sailing full-time.

Slipping the dock-lines. That is really the hardest part. We are currently giving away/selling all of our stuff. Preparing to sell our home & cars. We are keeping only the very most precious family heirlooms — not storing any Stuff™. I still have not bought our plane tickets down to Tortola where Ad Astra is berthed. Why not? Well, there is a settlement for a bad investment going down on June 8th, the boys have an important belt test in June to take, Kaiwen has a follow-up dental appointment on June 22nd. The yard needs to be cleaned up and some landscaping, the deck and interior painted, dozens of smaller handyman tasks. A wall needs to be repaired from some water damage, the house needs to be emptied, cleaned and inspected so I know what else needs to be done. There are contractors to interview, get bids from, and then check on the work, and pay people. There are goodbye parties, lunches, dinners and beers to be had.

But I still have to simply buy some tickets.

Next update will have the ticket info.

Originally published on Medium.