Every life has moments that quietly change its direction.
These stories trace the path that led me from a comfortable life ashore to living aboard a sailboat, one course correction at a time.
Act VII: Finding Mearr I’d never been to Tallahassee before. Actually, I’d never been anywhere in the Florida Panhandle. I was following my GPS and trusting that it knew more about where I was going than I did. I drove toward the address John and Kym had given me, with no real idea what I’d…
Act â…¥: Owning Who I Am The first morning in Brunswick felt surreal. I had actually left. There was no turning back. At the same time, it felt a little like I was on vacation. To be honest, most days it still does. I made myself coffee and sat looking through the windows at the…
A water-rescue kitten, two hurricanes, and the beginning of life aboard S/V Mearr Two days before Hurricane Helene arrived, I went out for supplies. And by supplies, I mean snacks. As one does. How very Southern I have become. I knew for a long time that a cat would one day be part of my…
Act â…¤: Departure I woke up on someone else’s sailboat. Not my boat. Not my future home. One of the sailors from the club offered me his race boat for the night so I could make it to my next sailing class in the morning without driving an hour home, getting there around 11 p.m.,…
Act â…£: Course Corrections I was lying on the floor in the middle of my house, listening to the sound people always describe as a freight train. It does sound like a freight train. The tornado sirens were screaming. Branches were snapping. Rain was hammering the siding so loudly I could barely think. Somewhere in…
Act â…¢: Direction I stopped walking. I still don’t know why. How long I stood there did I stand there? Time simply disappeared one warm Michigan spring afternoon in May. I was walking across the corporate campus where I worked. Objectively, life looked pretty good. I had a good job working in food service at…
Act â…¡: Adventure 0.5 The sailboat dream disappeared so completely that I never thought about it. Not because I had rejected it, but because I had interred it. Life moved on. Years later I reconnected with someone I had met in the early days of internet chat rooms. I visited her in Michigan a few…
Act I: Entombed Of course not… What was I thinking? That was never going to be my life. Looking back, I can pinpoint the exact afternoon I made that decision. I was in my early twenties, living in a working-class neighborhood in Quebec City and starting my career as a chef. Like most people in…