Floundering

Lately we have been wondering if our life here is all we hoped for. We have invested 30 years of blood, sweat and tears in this community; paying our taxes, playing by the rules, giving back to the community, planning for our retirement. And now, through no fault of our own, our business and house are suddenly worth very little and the economy is flatlining. Add to that our aging parents, rampant crime, and a feeling that our lives are stagnant. You may call it a midlife crisis...I call it a wake-up call. We gotta get out of this place!

Back in the 1980s, when we were in our 20s, we sold it all and bought a sailboat. We had no set plans, but managed to spend several months in Mexico cruising in the Sea of Cortez. We also skippered some boats back and forth from the San Joaquin Delta to Baja. But we made the fatal mistake of holding a loan on our house and the buyers didn't make the payments, so we had to come back and settle that issue. That put an end to our cruising so we sold our heavy displacement, fiberglass cruising boat and tried to regroup.

Then we bought the old beauty you see on the header. Tilly Whim. A Laurent Giles sloop built in 1947. She needed a lot of work, but we thought we could fix her up and continue the dream. She was beautiful and a joy to sail. We even raced in the Master Mariner's on San Francisco Bay with only the two of us for crew. But we could never cure the garboard leak, so we reluctantly decided to swallow the anchor, get back to "reality", and be responsible members of society.

So we did that for 30 years, built up a business, remodeled two houses, had two daughters, and tried to be happy with the American Dream. But somehow it didn't seem to fit. Well maybe now is the time to dust off that old plan. Sell the business. Sell the house. Sell the car. Liquidate everything and buy a boat. Wander. Marvel. Explore. Live.

Fortunes Afloat.
How does that sound?