Farewell To A Dream

(This is the first in a 4-part blog series)[su_button url=”https://terrywinckler.com/subscribe” target=”self” style=”default” background=”#2D89EF” color=”#FFFFFF” size=”3″ wide=”no” center=”no” radius=”auto” icon=”” icon_color=”#FFFFFF” text_shadow=”none” desc=”” onclick=”” rel=”” title=”” id=”” class=””]Subscribe[/su_button]

For 3 years I had a dream commute: a ferry ride between the island of Alameda and the emerald city of San Francisco. But, it wasn’t THE dream…of sailing around the world. That dream was tied at dock, as unable to break free as my wife Laura and I. And now that dream – The Boat as we still call it since we never came up with a name in 24 years – is for sale. The idea makes us bone-sad.

We lived on The Boat-with-no-name for 7 years – and built its interior at the same time.

And built a relationship: we sailed on it to get married at Angel Island.

And built a family: we birthed two boys who spent their earliest years rocked to sleep by passing boats and storms.

Whispers of Adventure

At night, as the boys slept next to us, after we had put down the saw and drill and epoxy brush, we whispered about sailing around the tip of Baja, Mexico to the reef of Cabo Pulmo – home to whales and rooster fish and leaping rays and other abundance that I had discovered as a 19-year-old hitchhiker; to Hawaii, where Laura’s mother was born into a family of cane and pineapple farmers; to Japan, birthplace of Laura’s father who left it at age 16 just before World War II.

“And maybe, just maybe, we could sail around The Horn (the fabled and treacherous tip of South America”),” I said. “And then back up to the shores of Guatemala.” Guatemala – where I had lived my most passionate moments as a war correspondent in the mid-1980’s. And onward until we ran out of world to see.

And then we would sail back under the Golden Gate Bridge to the shore of the East Bay, where Laura and I first met and concocted the grand adventure idea.

Couple of Opposites

Not once in her life had Laura dreamt of sailing the globe or even of living on a boat. The second of 2 children, she had known 2 homes and 2 hometowns growing up. I had been raised on the run between 2 coasts in 5 states – some twice – and 12 cities. Home to me was just a place to lay my head. I was the second of 7 children and saw no reason to increase the world population.

“I want a house and kids,” she confided one night amid afterglow.

Not once in my life did I want a house and kids. “I’ve always dreamed of living on a boat,” I confessed to her amid another night’s afterglow.

“A house that floats!” Laura said with a laugh.

“Kids would love it,” I said with a smile that hid my aversion to having kids.

“But I still want a real house some day,” she clarified.

“I promise,” I promised – never imagining that I would have to make good on it.

And that’s how we decided to get a boat and move aboard. No critical thinking. Just her smile and my expertise. I had once owned a skiff.

The Search

Armed with our collective ignorance, we began haunting the docks and marinas of The Emerald City (which is how I describe the entire Bay Area), passing out business cards that said: “Find us a liveaboard.” People tittered as they read the card and asked…what kind of boat? We knew it had to be a sailboat since only the Queen Mary motors across the sea…but what kind? Weekend after weekend, we patrolled the docks, stepping on sailboats – appalled at how tippy each one felt. Who can live on a teeter-totter?

In Alameda, we stepped aboard a houseboat – it didn’t tip. It was roomy. It had a living room. Two bedrooms with an upstairs. And what a view. But look at the chains that anchor it to shore. And where’s the mast?

We kept looking.

One weekend we found ourselves deep in the Delta at a marina full of odd floating objects, including a boat with a sale sign. We stepped aboard.

It didn’t tip. And it had a mast.

My heart beat like it did when I discovered Laura. The boat had a solid feel as I strode its broad decks, and I smiled with my hand on its tiller, imagining the towering seas this fine craft could handle. Inside, a world of efficient comfort opened up. We wandered through, as if in a museum, touching the perfections of a creature made to live aboard – at dock and at sea. I am tall, so when I found myself able to stand erect with my head in the sunny butterfly hatch, I was sold.

A What?

By now, a yacht broker had arrived with his used-car salesman’s grin. “It’s a Westsail 32,” he said. Who cares about a name? I thought.

“How much?”

Four times our budget.

My heart sank. Just like every other lipstick beauty in my past, she was beyond my station – beyond ours. We were, after all, just a couple of almost penniless journalists. Our goal was a boat, not a…yacht.

By then, both Laura and I had switched jobs to the Oakland Tribune when it was located at Jack London Square. There, one day, I read Jack’s own words inscribed on a bronze statue of him – “I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather my spark burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.”

Inspired, I walked past Heinold’s First and Last Chance saloon, where Jack studied as a child and caroused as an adult, and headed to Dixie’s Hot Dog Stand at the end of a nearby pier. I ordered a dog and jokingly offered to pay for it with my business card.

“Hmmm,” said Dixie, a leathery-looking woman who had reached that age when women use lipstick more for disguise than allure. “I know about a boat.” She looked up from the business card into my eyes and – looking back – I now understand what she saw in them.

A sucker.

(Next week – Dream Part 2: The Boat. Subscribe to the blog)