Don't Let Your Dreams Be Dreams

In July 2020, after the initial COVID lockdown, Shane and I risked a trip back to Montana to visit my family. My parents have a cabin on a lake, and at this cabin they have two Snark dinghy sailboats. I’d grown up sailing these, but Shane had never sailed before. We took them out on the water, and I showed him the basics. Turns out, he loved it! On the drive back to Seattle, we decided to find a place to take sailing lessons for real. Our first US Sailing Basic Keelboat lesson was in August 2020; it was a three-part course, and we were hooked. We continued on to Basic Cruising and Navigation & Piloting, chartering 34’ to 37’ boats for day-sailing.

In the spring of 2021, we continued our journey by taking classes to get certified for Bareboat Cruising and Coastal Navigation. On the Bareboat Cruising overnight trip, as we walked up the dock to the charter boat for the class, this is what we saw:

The Dream

During this time I also found my way to Sailing YouTube, and I was enraptured by what I found. Here are normal people who are basically professional adventurers - incredible! I’d dreamed of doing this kind of thing all my life. I started casually looking at boats on yachtworld, daydreaming about what kind of boat I might want to buy one day. I’d done the math, and looked at my budget, and decided that I could afford a boat at $50k or less. I started putting together a list of must-haves and nice-to-haves on my potential future boat.

I’d also done some reading about what to look for in a boat; naturally, I picked up a copy of This Old Boat by Don Casey. This line from the first chapter really stuck with me, especially as I looked at Southern Cross.

The boat you own should make your heart sing.

Southern Cross made my heart sing. She was a thing of beauty - sleek lines, low profile, and she ticked almost all of my boxes on my Criteria checklist. As we walked away from the dock on Sunday, I could hardly tear my eyes away. I suggested to Shane that he come back on Monday and check the boat out on the inside. I was working and couldn’t come with him, but when he came back from the boat Monday afternoon, he was pretty excited about it. I took the following afternoon off, and we both went back down to the boat, spending about two hours checking out every nook and cranny. And that was it - I was sold. I put in an offer on the spot. A couple of days later the offer was accepted, and there we were - on our way to buying a boat!