When I asked this of Whitey, my husband of 16 years instinctively knew that I wasn’t talking about going out for a day sail nearby but that I was asking about moving back onto a boat to live on, returning to the sea. The year was 2006 and we had been living on land for almost 6 years. Up until then we had had 12 years living on sailboats from California, Mexico, Panama and throughout most of the Caribbean. They were beautiful, eventful, disaster filled, emotional, fun, exhausting, and wonderful years.
It was a vagabond lifestyle that family and old friends sometimes questioned. But it was our life. A lifestyle of boats and water was the life we had created as a couple. And in October, 2000 it was a lifestyle that was taken from us quickly. With no notice or expectation some unseen object floating in the water set off a chain of events that changed our lives. When I see the larger scaled worldwide disasters in the past years such as earthquakes, hurricanes or tsunamis I am mutually saddened for the people who are affected. To have ones home, source of income and lifestyle taken away by one unforeseen event is something difficult to understand. After our personal disaster, we needed a break from the ocean.
tell people anD however unromantic it sounds, it is the truth. When Whitey asked me on a date to go sailing with him in May, 1988, I thought it would just be a fun day with an obviously fun guy. As a single girl living in San Francisco, the opportunity to go sailing on the bay was naturally on my wish list. As a girl from Utah, I had lived three years in the Bay Area and had yet to be invited on a boating trip on the Bay. 
