Can We Do This Boat Thing?

You may have noticed that this is not a chronoligical blog -- in other words it jumps all over the place. That's how our life is -- plans go awry, spouses have spats, and life somehow keeps happening. In August of 1995 we had a massive garage sale. We didn’t want to put anything in storage because we were moving to the Virgin Islands on a boat – why would we need anything like beds or winter coats again? So, if it couldn’t fit into the Suburban it had to go. We’d lived in our 2,000 s/f home for 5 years and had three kids. That adds up to a lot of stuff. But from kids’ toys and kitchen appliances to shelves and skiis, the only things we kept were shorts, swimsuits, cloth diapers (oops), our big box Sony tv/vcr combo (plus Lion King, Aladdin, The Land Before Time and The Rescuers videos), 2 bikes and 2 bike trailers, fishing poles we’d never used, tools and our Suburban. Connor, Jake, Truman and I made it to my parents’ home in Junction City, Oregon. The flight with three boys 6 months, 2 and 4 was annoying to everyone except the kids. Marty had to wrap up a few things (final exams and selling the house) and showed up rested and relaxed two weeks later – right before I sent out a missing person’s report. Remember, this was 1995, cell phones were a luxury, not part of our DNA. We got right to work on our marriage (in other words testing it to the limit), getting a little more organized and building a roof rack for the Suburban. We opted for the rack instead of a trailer for “simplicity” and because we just didn’t have that much stuff. But this was no ordinary roof rack. Before the days of off-the-shelf Thules, a rack to fit a Suburban was definitely a DIY project – but nothing engineer Marty couldn’t tackle. It ended up being a massive cargo “basket” that covered the entire roof and significantly altered the engineered physics of the vehicle. Driving down the road was always fun because on windy days Marty would holler “port” or “starboard” and -- seatbelts being more of a suggestion back then -- we’d hurl ourselves against the windward side of the truck to avoid being blown over. Our plan to wrap up August in Oregon failed by two months, but Grandma and Grandpa did a great job of acting like they were sorry to see us go. Hurricane season is a thing in the southern states of the US. It goes from about June to October and it’s not something you want to mess with when on a boat - or ever. So actually our late start was turning out to be a blessing in disguise. We figured (why did we think we knew anything?) we’d be in Florida by late October, find our awesome sailboat, learn to sail, and be sailing south in November.