Exactly 17,128 days have elapsed since I made my entrance into the world. I know this to be true because Google tells me so. Most of those days have been good ones; some haven’t. On the whole I can’t complain; in fact, on the whole, I’ve been very fortunate.
Today is a very important day. It’s the first day of the rest of my life. I know what I want to do, when I want to do it and who I want to do it with. All of which is highly unlikely. Unlikely that I should want any such things in the first place and on the face of it, even more unlikely that it can happen. But today I made a decision. I decided I’m going to make it happen. Which now means that it’s highly unlikely that it won’t. I already have the what, when, who and why. The only unknown is the how.
I grew up in a family that was associated with the water from before I was born. My grandparents had a boat shed on the beach at McRae, between the yacht club and Safety Beach. My cousins had two Sailfishes that I think my uncle had made. At some point my parents bought a Heron; not sure if it was before or after I was born but certainly I don’t remember us not having it and there are photos of me on the beach as a toddler with it in the background. My grandfather had also built a fishing boat with an inboard motor that was kept in the boat shed, and there were many summer expeditions with the cousins catching flathead that my Aunt and Mum would fry up when we got home.
At some point my Dad and brother decided it would be nice to race and join the yacht club, so they got us a Flying Ant and Mum and Dad got the first 125 to ever hit the water, number 6 (the other five hulls must have met early demises). I spent my teens racing and learning to sail, and dreaming of cruising the world. Thirty years later, I’ve reconnected with sailing after the common gap caused by travelling and having a family and am now sailing my own yacht, an Elliott 10.5. The purchase was all about reconnecting with the cruising dream, but it was also about hedging my bets. The Elliott isn’t the ideal cruising boat, but it’s quite capable of ocean sailing and is comfortable enough to take away for weekends. It’s also an affordable racing yacht that steers like a dinghy; basically a skiff-shaped planing hull on steroids and is hugely fun to sail, albeit somewhat challenging to sail well. As much as teaching me to helm and having fun in the mean time, the purchase was designed to teach me about boat ownership, as a preparation for cruising when I can eventually retire.
Today we were coming back from the Wooden Boat Festival in Geelong on my partner’s 1950’s Alan Payne design Terra Novae. I’d spent a memorable weekend on the boat with some great friends. As we left Point Richards channel the wind was perfect and the choice to head slightly to port and home to Melbourne seemed all wrong. The Heads were to starboard, and the ocean beyond was beckoning more strongly than ever. Today I decided to make it happen.
If you’re reading this and you’ve ever dared to dream of an improbable future for yourself, this story is for you. It’s going to be the story of how I make my dream real, of how the reality of my today will come to seem like a dream from a distant yesterday. I don’t know how it’s going to happen yet. I guess we’ll find out together. I’m looking forward to watching how the story unfolds almost as much as I’m looking forward to its conclusion – if there is ever a conclusion to a story about life.
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