The Obnoxiously Long Way Home

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 find when I got there or where my life would go after that.

This wasn’t moving toward an answer. I was just moving toward Tallahassee.

The uncertainty followed me through the gate and down the winding driveway toward their house. Then I saw Kym, and most of the nervousness disappeared. I was thrilled to see her.

She welcomed me inside and showed me the guest room. The “guest” part would become increasingly theoretical.

I arrived two weeks before Thanksgiving. If you’re not early, you’re late, so really, I couldn’t have been more on time.

My assumption was that Thanksgiving would come, I’d figure out what was next, and then I’d head toward wherever that turned out to be. Two weeks felt like plenty of time to solve my entire life.

John and Kym lived on an amazing property beside a lake. It was a small family compound with three houses. A family member lived in one, another sat vacant, and the main house where we stayed was directly on the water.

The lake was very low when I arrived. Beside the house was a large two-slip dock they’d started rebuilding. The new pilings were already in, and some of the framing was beginning to come together. The water was so low that we could walk beneath the whole thing and inspect it from the fish’s point of view.

I was still working the week before Thanksgiving, and after work I’d spend time beside the lake pondering what the hell I was doing with my life.

By then, I’d learned that problems like this rarely get solved by thinking about them harder. I could send my brain down the same path again and again, convinced that on the next lap it would return with information it hadn’t had on any of the previous laps. You know what they say about doing the same thing and expecting different results. I preferred to think of it as persistence.

A jigsaw puzzle doesn’t get easier because you glare at it harder. Sometimes you have to walk away until the piece you’ve already tried six times suddenly fits exactly where you tried it.

Instead of trying to think my way to an answer, I started helping with the dock project. I had no idea what I was doing, so John would show me, I’d try it, and before long I could actually help. It was always exciting to get back to it. I joined him on lumber runs, encouraged him if motivation was running low, and made the work go faster simply by being a second set of hands. I liked learning something new, and there was always another piece of the project waiting for us.

Thanksgiving arrived before I’d managed to solve my entire life. I spent time with Kym’s family locally, then travelled to Ocala to be with John’s. I loved seeing how some of my friends’ quirks and qualities appeared throughout their families. In a few cases, the apple had barely cleared the tree. 

That year, I had a lot to be grateful for. John and Kym had welcomed me into their home when I didn’t know where I was going next. Then their families welcomed me too. I’m crying as I write this because it happened at a time when I needed it more than I understood.

I was also crushed that I wasn’t buying my boat yet.

Most of the delay came down to money. I was counting on the divorce being finalized so I could use my share of the home equity to buy a sailboat outright. I knew I didn’t want a boat loan. A boat is already a money pit. Let’s not owe money on it too.

I don’t remember exactly when the conversation happened, but at some point I told John and Kym more openly where things stood. I still didn’t know what came next, and the divorce timeline wasn’t cooperating with the perfectly reasonable two-week schedule I’d invented.

They offered to let me stay while I searched for my boat.

That was an enormous relief. It meant I didn’t immediately have to find somewhere else to go. It also made me nervous. The delay could stretch on, and I didn’t want their generosity to become an obligation they felt trapped inside.

I told them we needed to keep talking about it. If they changed their minds, they could say so and I’d move on. If they needed space, I could make myself scarce for a while.

While I was there, I wanted to make myself useful.

In other words, I intentionally became free labor.

I didn’t have much of a social life in Tallahassee, so a lot of my free time went toward helping with the dock, doing maintenance around the property, cleaning the house, and cooking. I kept “my” room and the bathroom I used clean. Anything that lightened their load, I was happy to take on.

I wasn’t keeping score. They were giving me stability during a deeply uncertain time, and helping was how I made sure the arrangement didn’t feel one-sided.

While all of that was happening, I was learning what I wanted so I could find my first sailboat.

I studied different brands and models, comparing layouts and prices while slowly figuring out what what was realistic. Not having much money simplified the search considerably.

The galley mattered because I like to cook. Boat galleys tend to be small, so I was hoping to find one that was slightly less small. Believe it or not, there are meaningful differences between boats of similar size.

I also wanted a model with a strong knowledge base behind it. This would be my first boat, and I was stepping into a very steep learning curve. Being able to search a problem and find years of conversations from owners who had already broken the same thing felt important.

I wasn’t ready to start visiting boats because I wasn’t ready to buy one. There wasn’t much point in falling in love with something and asking the seller to hold it until my divorce finally decided to cooperate.

By late December, I had a much better idea of what I wanted. I’d also reluctantly lined up a loan so I could buy a boat and repay it once the divorce was finalized.

I didn’t love the plan, though it gave me a way to move forward instead of waiting indefinitely.

The first boat I seriously considered was in Jacksonville. It was a thirty-six-foot center-cockpit sailboat with a long galley counter that felt functional and a regular rectangular full-size bed in the aft cabin. The salon was a little small, though that seemed like a reasonable compromise. I liked it enough to get a survey.

The survey did not go well.

A marine survey is designed to list everything wrong with a boat, so even a decent vessel can sound as though it’s being held together by optimism. This one uncovered a few things that were well beyond what I was ready to tackle. My reaction was telling me to stop. Instead, I chalked it up to nerves and kept moving forward. That was a costly mistake. Amateurish at best.

I didn’t listen to myself. Much later in the process, I finally admitted that this wasn’t the boat I wanted and backed out well past some important deadlines. It cost me thousands of dollars. I’m very happy I made that call. I’m less happy about how long it took me to make it.

When I returned to Tallahassee, I felt like I’d fallen flat on my face. I thought I’d finally been moving forward, only to find myself back where I’d started with less money.

Part of the reason I stayed in the deal for so long was that I felt pressure to leave John and Kym’s house. I’d already been there for two months. They’d told me many times that they were happy to have me, and somehow I still created my own deadline and pressured myself to meet it.

I hated buying a boat. People had told me it was easier than buying a house. It felt much worse. Maybe that was because the purchase carried so much more emotion. This wasn’t only buying property.

I was trying to buy my way into an entirely different life.

I felt stuck, but the world around me apparently hadn’t received the memo. The dock was making excellent progress, and the lake had returned to something closer to its normal level after we dismantled a beaver dam that had been blocking the water. That’s a story for another time.

Growing up in Quebec, being in the water at that time of year was inconceivable. This was my first winter south of Michigan, and not dealing with seasonal depression for once felt like a very good omen.

Sometimes I made what we called dock sushi. I’d prepare sushi rolls, John and Kym would come home from work, and we’d grab whatever drinks we wanted before walking down to eat beside the water on what we’d helped rebuild. That never got old.

The contrast was strange. My dream felt stalled, yet life around me was still full. I was working with my hands, feeding people I loved, and spending evenings beside the water.

None of that meant the disappointment had gone anywhere. I didn’t stop wanting it, exactly. Doubts had simply started showing up. Are you sure this is a good idea? No. I wasn’t sure.

At the time, I just kept looking for the next thing I could do around the property. Give me branches to pick up, leaves to rake, or a hole to dig, and I was in. Once, John and I cut down a cherry tree beside the house. There wasn’t much room for error. It had to fall into a narrow gap between two other trees, and it landed exactly where we wanted it. Apparently, what I’d learned about felling trees at the men’s retreat had stuck with me. I used some of the green cherrywood to smoke pork afterward. It doesn’t get much more local than that.

Those projects gave me somewhere to put myself during the day. It was rewarding to learn, become genuinely useful, and see evidence that some part of me was still moving when so much of the rest felt beyond my control. Looking back, all of it was one solid handrail while the rest of my life pitched around me. At night, when there was nothing left to rake, carry, cut, or build, the uncertainty usually found me again.

I was still working with my therapist then, and I needed those sessions more than I understood at the time. Therapy gave me somewhere to process everything the projects couldn’t: leaving Michigan without a home of my own, having to leave Brunswick, the collapse of the plan I’d been counting on, and a divorce that still hadn’t quite become final.

For the next few months, I contributed and simply lived. There was my job, therapy, everyday life, and whatever needed doing around the property. I swam and paddleboarded through the dark, tannin-colored lake surrounded by cypress trees. I tried to stay connected to what was happening around me and trust that something would eventually line up.

Then, in mid-April, the divorce was finalized.

I had so many mixed feelings. There was relief, partly because it meant I finally had the money to buy the boat. It also felt like permission to begin living my life again, which surprised me. I hadn’t realized how much the unfinished divorce had been holding me back until it was over.

There was grief too. It was done. That chapter of my life had closed for real.

It was deeply bittersweet, and I was still questioning myself about the boat. Regardless of whether I followed the dream, something had to come next. John and Kym had been incredibly generous, and I knew I couldn’t stay there forever.

On May 10, 2024, three tornadoes tore through Tallahassee and the surrounding area.

Early that Friday morning, Kym rushed in to wake me. “Get up! There’s a tornado coming.” I scrambled out of bed, and we gathered in the stairwell in the middle of the house. We could hear the EF2 tornado rushing past somewhere nearby. It was loud, though nothing like my first experience. Mostly, we had no idea how close it was.

Once it passed, we went outside to see what had happened. The property was fairly unscathed. Across the lake was a different story. Trees were down everywhere.I called off work. That’s one way to start a weekend, I guess.

A friend across the lake called because they needed help clearing trees, so we headed over. The drive there was sobering, seeing the devastation and realizing how close it had come to us.

Later, we went to help another friend whose office parking lot had been hit by a falling tree. I thought the first drive had been bad. This was much worse. Power poles were snapped, tall pines had broken in half like toothpicks, and branches covered everything. It was surreal. Utility trucks were everywhere. We’d turn down a street and have to turn around because it was blocked by fallen trees.

Somehow, though, the day itself was fun. It was hard physical work, sweating in the Florida heat, dragging branches, cutting things apart, getting dirty, and donating a little blood along the way. I loved it.

More than anything, I loved being able to show up and help. Working alongside other people, doing something useful when it was needed, made me feel like I was part of the community rather than simply staying there.

I slept incredibly well that night. My body was completely spent and my soul felt full. Apparently, the recipe was manual labor, Florida heat, a little blood, and helping people I cared about.

As good as that day felt, it didn’t answer the bigger question of what came next.

I started looking at other possibilities. Maybe I’d buy a small house. Maybe I’d rent an apartment and build a life on land. I’d been away from sailboats for more than five months, and my doubts had grown stronger with the distance.

The only way forward was to test myself. Did I still want this or not?

I took a trip to St. Augustine. I loved that city, and it had already been home to several important moments in my life. It also had boats.

That was the point.

I tend to understand big decisions through feeling. A pros-and-cons list might’ve helped me compare costs or convenience, but it wasn’t going to tell me which life I wanted to experience. I had to put myself near boats again and pay attention to what happened.

Land or sea.

I stayed in St. Augustine Beach and walked along the same beach I’d visited before the sailing class where I met John and Kym. As I walked, I remembered the first time I stepped aboard a sailboat and how quickly I’d known this was something I wanted.

So what was missing now?

I booked one of those dolphin tours. I didn’t particularly need to see dolphins, but I needed to be on the water.

The moment I stepped aboard, it felt natural. Then the boat started moving, and I felt the water beneath me. The whole dream came back. That was what had been missing. I returned to my hotel room that evening and opened the boat listings.

Game on.

By then, I’d already ruled out a lot of boats and narrowed the search to a few realistic models. The Catalina 36 and Beneteau 361 were near the top of the list, with a few others still in consideration.

I wasn’t looking for perfection. I needed something fundamentally sound, without a major problem I wasn’t ready to tackle, while leaving enough money for repairs, upgrades, and basic equipment that would inevitably follow.

The larger question was where each boat would take me.

There were possibilities in Kemah, Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, and Brunswick. Then I looked at the Brunswick listing and thought, That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.

I already knew the owner and the marina. More importantly, I already had a community there. For a first-time boat owner staring at a learning curve that looked increasingly vertical, that mattered enormously.

So I decided to return to Brunswick, get a survey, rule out anything major, and move forward.

It was my first time stepping aboard a Catalina 36, and she was much roomier than I’d understood from the photos and layouts. Since I’d be living aboard, that was a fairly important detail. She seemed to be in good overall condition, with the obvious caveat that she was built in 1989.

Buying her felt a little like buying a starter home. She didn’t have everything I could ever want, but she fit what I needed. She was a size I could manage alone and offered nearly unlimited opportunities to learn something new every day.

The survey went much better this time. Several of the known problem areas on Catalina 36s had already been addressed, which was a huge relief. There was still a long list because there’s always a long list.

I call it the possessed list. It grows on its own, and you can never make it disappear. It’s haunting. Some of the items could wait. Apparently, a few could wait almost two years.

Once I was back in Tallahassee, I decided to move ahead for real. When I officially called and said I was in, I ran to the bathroom and threw up.

It had been almost twenty-five years since I first discovered that people actually lived aboard boats. Now I was signing paperwork and committing myself to doing exactly that.

My body had some feelings about it.

The reaction made sense. I wasn’t only buying a boat; I was changing lifestyles completely. Everything I knew was about to become different. Ordinary tasks would be harder, things would break more often, and I’d be living in roughly 180 square feet while voluntarily taking responsibility for a machine designed to keep water on the outside while the water around it constantly looked for a way in.

In return, I’d get to experience a life I’d once thought was unimaginable. I could sail, wake up on the water every day, and be part of a world that moved.

That last part mattered more than I knew how to explain.

All my life, moving had meant losing people. When I was young, each move made my friends disappear, and I’d have to begin again from scratch. I’d never had many friends or felt a strong sense of belonging.

Brunswick had been my first real experience of that.

Now, moving didn’t necessarily mean leaving people behind. Cruisers departed and returned. Boats crossed paths again somewhere farther down the coast. Friendships could stretch across miles until our paths crossed again somewhere else.

I wasn’t choosing a boat and then hoping I’d find somewhere to belong. I was returning to a place where I already did.

There was one more trip before I moved aboard. John and Kym had invited me to join them for the second week of their vacation, so two weeks after committing to buy the boat, I flew to The Bahamas and joined them aboard their chartered catamaran.

I finalized some of the paperwork while sitting in the sun on deck, looking out over water that resembled a swimming pool, and drinking a Kalik.

The boat got her name on that trip too. I kept joking that I’d eventually have a little pirate cat aboard, and naturally the cat would say, “Me-arrrrrrrr.”

The joke stuck, and I put the name Mearr on her Coast Guard documentation. I didn’t know it then, but while I was in The Bahamas joking about the pirate cat I might someday have aboard, Setzer was being born. His timing was impeccable.

We flew back from The Bahamas on June 26, and I started gathering everything I owned and packing it back into my car. I’d arrived at John and Kym’s house expecting to stay for two weeks. Nearly eight months later, I was finally leaving. It was sad.

They’d become family. The room had become mine, and their home had carried me through a period when I genuinely didn’t know where my life was heading. I was all grown up and moving out.

They were sad to see me leave, and I’m sure they were at least a little happy to have their space back. They said they’d enjoyed having me around.

Being useful doesn’t hurt.

I packed the car and drove to Brunswick on my own. On July 4, 2024, I began carrying everything aboard Mearr.

It felt surreal, more like a vacation than a permanent move. Honestly, living aboard still feels that way surprisingly often. The boat was empty, and I carried my life down the dock piece by piece, deciding where everything belonged and slowly turning a thirty-five-year-old sailboat into my home.

I did enough to make sure I could sleep comfortably that night. Then I went to find my friends around the marina.

That evening, Brunswick launched its Fourth of July fireworks right beside us. People came from all over town to watch from the marina, while those of us already there had front-row seats.

Almost twenty-five years earlier, I’d discovered that people actually lived on sailboats. I had no idea then that the thought would follow me through most of my adult life, sometimes buried so deeply it was practically entombed and then excavated.

Now I was living aboard one, surrounded by a community I’d found almost accidentally, watching fireworks from the place that felt like home. An obnoxiously long way home.

The reality of finally living aboard took much longer to settle in.

The realities of boat ownership did not.