Overcomplicating things... a lot

In our zest for wanting to sail, we’ve done a lot. We’ve gone to the sailboat show in Annapolis for years. We’ve walked the aisles of not just the boats, but every gadget on display — all four days. We’ve asked every silly beginner question we could think of while those working the boats patiently answered for the 1000th time that day, hoping just one of us would finally make a purchase. We’d come home with catamarans, monohulls, dinghies, electronics, and sugarplum fairies dancing in our heads. We’d come home with a purchase or two we could carry on a plane — enough to keep the idea that the dream is still alive.

As the Annapolis boat show faded into Colorado winters, the freezing cold was like a shot in the arm inspiring us for warmer climates. Sometimes that meant BVI or Key West to charter and get our fix. Sometimes Mexico to lay by the pool or sail the resort Hobie Cat a few times. Just enough to keep the high.

But what can we do during the days, weeks, months to keep the pulse going? YouTube. It’s amazing how much sailing content is out there. Want to learn how to cross from Florida to the Bahamas? No problem. Operating that Garmin chartplotter? PredictWind seems complicated no more. Apps? We must have dozens — knots, iNavX, ASA, snag-a-slip, and the all-important anchor monitor so you can tell if your house rips off the foundation and moves 100’ away.

Given we didn’t feel qualified to set sail, we took more classes. ASA — been there, done that, twice. Weather windows — check. Docking — like a video game. Provisioning? We’ll eat fish every day (sarc). Fishing? What’s so hard about dropping a pole in the water (asks every new sailor)?

The point is twofold. On the one hand, you can do a lot between now and when you push off to build experience and keep the dream alive. On the other hand, for many, this is all we do. We keep talking, keep buying, keep reading, keep, keep, keep. Our feet get so buried in the shore that we never push off. Some of us self-sabotage this way — every reason why we are not quite ready. We are envious of people who throw caution to the wind, buy an affordable yet capable boat, and push off with little experience. They just do it. They didn’t know they weren’t “ready.” They said, “we’ll figure it out as we go.”

It would be glorious to have a second chance to have gone 30 years ago. But we don’t dwell on that. The fact is, we went. We are no longer sitting on the sidelines wishing ourselves into the game. Coach Poseidon called our number.

You own your outcome. Preparation serves the departure date — it shouldn’t replace it.

If you’re young, do it now. If you’re older, do it now. If you’re really old, tell your old self there is a new self in town — and do it now.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt

— Dave & Beth