Dreamers, Talkers and Doers

"Most men die at twenty-seven, we just bury them at seventy-two."

-Mark Twain

The schooner Woodwind off Annapolis, MD

My wife and I attended a seminar at the Annapolis Sailboat Show last year for the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC). Run by the World Cruising Club, the ARC is an organized fleet of cruising sailboats that crosses the Atlantic Ocean every year, with one rally (ARC World) even doing a fifteen month circumnavigation. I was skeptical of attending, but it turned out to be an excellent resource for someone contemplating an ocean crossing. What was clear from the beginning though is that we found our tribe; that group of kindred spirits which is all too rare a find in today's world.

That tribe is made up of three types of people apparently: dreamers, talkers and doers. The dreamers are those that waited too long, are too old, or who have too many commitments to leave and cross an ocean. The talkers want to do it, may even have the boat to do it, but can't muster the courage or resources to drop lines and sail away. The doers though - and there were a few - they're ready and the commitment is obvious for all to see. At the time my wife and I were in the talking stage, having graduated from dreaming a few years previously. We didn't own a boat, but we knew what we wanted and had a plan to achieve it.

Passing Manhattan, heading south from Hell Gate

We wanted to cross an ocean, a decision made a couple years ago after watching a National Geographic special on the Turkish coast. Previously we had planned on sailing the Caribbean, but after that show ... it was the Mediterranean for us. We had chartered a bunch of different yachts in the Caribbean and the Chesapeake Bay to find the right one. We had settled on a Leopard 40 catamaran; the larger salon, forward companionway and anchor setup being significant selling points. A tough, South African-made boat, she's a tank. She'll never point higher than seventy degrees off true wind and makes significant leeway in winds above fifteen knots. In fact she barely moves under plain sail in winds under ten knots ...

When we shared this at the seminar and our tribe was not impressed. We were met with some sneers and looks of disgust, which to be fair, my wife and I would have given them as well four years ago. When the others learned how much we'd searched to find the right boat, there was a degree more understanding and perhaps even envy that we had put in so much time in test sails. As we told them though, we've both been uncomfortable on boats, having learned seamanship on a 19th century schooner and currently as captain and crew on a Chesapeake Bay skipjack built in 1911. We saw no need to be uncomfortable on our own boat, in our sixties; the Winnebego-of-the-Seas sailing the trade-wind passage will do just fine for us.

Dave, Steve, Dana and Tom off Deltaville, VA at the end of the trip

And then we bought the boat ... now we're doers, or moving in that direction. We purchased a Leopard 40 in Connecticut and motor-sailed her back to the Chesapeake Bay (there was a lot more motoring than sailing). It was a great shakedown cruise for us, our crew and the boat. We had a short day the first day and anchored at City Island in NYC to wait for slack tide at Hell Gate, that notorious confluence of New York Harbor and Long Island Sound. The next day (and then some) was a brutal forty hour cruise past Manthattan, down the Jersey coast, then up the Delaware River and into the C&D Canal to do a stealth tie-up at a dock. After six hours solid sleep, we were underway again down the Chesapeake Bay for another thirty hours to Deltaville where we will keep her as we get ready for the next phase.