In the Beginning…

On June 18, 2017, the first entry was made in the diary of SV Last Call, given to Jason, my husband, as a Father’s Day gift. This really means that I essentially gave it to myself, being the more prolific writer out of us two. In the very first entry that somewhat doubled as his card, I encouraged “Please enter dreams, plans, and logistics here! ——>” However, the eternal documentarian in me took over the diary, following those instructions. His first and only entry was this very simple game plan: 1) Quit jobs, 2) Sell everything, 3) Get catamaran, 4) Outfit catamaran, and 5) Sail around the world. It’s nice and concise, I have to admit, and we were in total agreement. 

So what was the catalyst that led us to that point? I can say with certainty that it was not any one thing. I am still struggling to put into words how this all evolved. That’s the funny thing with evolution, it is an ongoing process over many “generations” of thought. We recently were trying to recall when exactly we had made our decision. For some reason, our busy and cluttered minds seemed to think October, but our trusty SV Last Call diary states the truth; we had our boat name decided as of last June! Time sure does fly. So to have selected and agreed upon a boat name by then means that this “thing” was in the works for much longer than that. 

I am going to note here that the following are my (Stacey) sentiments and perspectives. So it goes back to January of 2017. It was a dark time for me, and maybe for both of us. I was preparing for my first born to leave the nest. Middle age arrived and was staring me right in the face. My job started to be unrewarding and become a drain as new responsibilities were added with no associated compensation. My lifestyle was the worst it has been since my younger years; too much sitting, too much beer. Deaths and disease among family members and acquaintances were taking their toll on an already emotionally taxed me. I had lost all interest in my passion projects: cooking, creating recipes, reading, and writing. The only thing that made me happy at that time were avenues of escape. We owned an RV and loved to travel in it as a family. No matter where we went, there was newness, things to document, and things to experience together. However, unless you can be on eternal vacation, you eventually have to come home and go back to the zombie life, stumbling trance-like through your days, waiting for something to give. Through Jason’s search for some RV solar videos, he discovered the YouTubers and bloggers, Gone With the Wynns. We started to watch this younger couple, who gave it all up to travel around the country in an RV. It was a small dose of escape that helped us get through the week as we binge watched the previous episodes. What started out as a novel thought became, “we can do this and we want to do this”. Then the Wynns went out and bought a catamaran and left land life. Then our thinking became “we want to get on a boat and we need to do this NOW”. While we are still in good physical health (because we can always hop on an RV later) and before anything happens to one of us. 

So January to June was the nebulous time in our journey thus far. There was no SV Last Call diary on the scene so there isn’t much I can share from that time period, but things were definitely in the works to end up where we did in June.