#3: Sell Me Your Idea, and I’ll Buy It!

As soon as I turned 40, Nick and I booked a Colorado trip to snowboard with dear friends. It was going to be our first vacation in a long time, so we were excited to get out of town. Before we left, though, I found the latest documentary of the great snowboarder Travis Rice so we could watch to get even more pumped about our upcoming trip. The ending was a bit surprising, considering I’d only seen Travis in frostbite-inducing weather. Toward the end credits, it showed him sailing away on an amazingly beautiful boat on an amazingly beautiful day. A minute later, Nick approached me and said, “I still want to live on a boat.” I laughed and agreed it sounded like fun, sailing away into oblivion, drinking fresh fruit smoothies while watching the dolphins race by our side. He said, “I’m serious. This could work.” I don’t remember if he said much more, because all I could think was, “Way to go, Travis. You just have to go and make everything you do look awesome.”

I spent the next couple of years wavering behind supporting this unorthodox idea of Nick’s that would turn my world upside down, but he remained tenacious in his confidence level, always assuring me that this would work. That’s Nick for you. His optimism is infectious, and eventually, I too became infected. He never wrote that pros-and-cons list I requested. No, that would have been a waste of his time since he was already turning his dream into reality. Instead, he continually researched and updated his spreadsheets on everything he could find about sailing vessels. Left with enough time to marinate in Nick’s initial dream, our family’s future reality began morphing as we started taking it more seriously. The big questions were: Would we buy a boat or build our own? Do we want a catamaran with two hulls or a trimaran with three? If we built it, where would that take place?

What sold me on living aboard in the first place was that Nick just really wanted to do it. I realized I didn’t want my unwillingness (a.k.a. fear of embracing a new water-bound lifestyle) to be the handicap for his long-awaited desire, becoming the reason for his possible lifelong regret. Also, I had nothing tying me down: I was already homeschooling the boys and working from home as a freelancer. I hadn’t yet formed any great friendships or joined local groups since we’d just moved to our little town. And I hadn’t again heard the beckoning call of that mysterious loon since the first foggy day I decided to move here. Maybe it was time to turn my world upside down after all and move on?

So, the first step was to join forces with Nick and answer those big questions: We would build a catamaran on an empty lot that we had initially planned to build our dream house on. Instead of a dream house, Nick got to work designing a metal structure that would house our dream boat as we built it. Then, after we pull the boat out years later to test the waters, we’d transform the empty structure into a contemporary barndo, which we also designed. Things were coming together. This just might work. . . .

It’s already been a handful of years since our snowboarding trip that ignited the first sailing-together discussion. Ironically, the photo above shows us at the top of a black slope called Wake Up Call. It wasn’t too bad to go down. In fact, it was pretty fun. Or maybe I blocked out all the scary hard parts, I’m not sure. But at the very least, we made it through to the end and can say we did it. And that’s something.

Photo by Mattias Olsson