How I got from "NO" to "GO" in a matter of weeks

I wasn't going to do this trip - it was waaayy outside my comfort zone.

Wayne had often talked about taking a long sailing trip - in fact, his dream was to spend our winters living on the boat. I nixed that idea because I had never known anyone who lived on a boat before - I’m from Minnesota, about the farthest point from the coast of any state in the U.S. - and it was such a radical idea to me. Besides that, our 37' Island Packet lacked modern conveniences that I felt were necessary, it wasn't big enough for me to live in, and just the thought of confinement to such a small space nearly gave me claustrophobia. Also, I didn't care to sail nearly as much as Wayne. I had visions of being left on the dock with a sleeping bag and suitcase when he wanted to sail and I didn't. My dream was a condo with a dock in the backyard - the best of of both worlds.

With the purchase of our Florida home (house, not condo) in February, 2004, Wayne suddenly had a purpose and a destination for that long sailing trip. I agreed that we needed to get the boat to Florida, but had my own ideas on how to get it there. My first choice: truck it down. My second choice: take it down the Mississippi. Wayne's first choice: the east coast via the Erie Canal and Hudson River; Wayne's second choice: to the Gulf of Mexico via Chicago, the Mississippi, and the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway to Mobile, Alabama. Part of my reasoning was that, initially, retirement was not in the picture and I thought 3-4 months was far too long for Wayne to be away from the business. It seemed to me that expedience was the wiser, albeit less adventurous, way to go.

We obviously needed to hash out a compromise somehow. So how did our compromise result in a trip that was approximately 1500 miles longer than the longest route we had considered? And how did I end up making a trip I wanted little or no part of less than a year earlier?

In the spring of 2006, someone approached Wayne about buying the business. Things happened quickly, and by the middle of the summer they had an agreement. With my blessing and encouragement, since he would now be retired, Wayne started making plans to sail the boat down the east coast via the Erie Canal and Hudson River. I intended to meet up with him and do a week here or there, but mostly he would be accompanied by other friends and sailors, who were eagerly lining up to do the trip.

I had many rational reasons for not wanting to do the whole trip:

1. Fear: the thought of being in water with no land in sight terrified me, as did the thought of being caught in a storm and countless other Vague Unknowns.
2. Inexperience: the longest sailing trip I had ever done was a week; 3-4 months seemed like too much of a jump. I had no idea how I'd do on a trip like that and was afraid I would be more of a liability than an asset to Wayne.
3. Lack of interest: Unlike Wayne, sailing is not my passion.
4. Homesickness: I just didn't want to be gone that long; I like my land life too much and didn’t want to be away from friends and family for several months at a time.
5. Uncertainties with communication: On previous sailing trips Wayne had done just in Lake Superior, cell phone service or any other type of communication was almost non-existent. I was concerned that we wouldn’t have contact with loved ones.
6. Too much togetherness: I am used to, and appreciate, having lots of alone time, and frankly, the thought of being with someone - even my husband - 24/7 for 3-4 months made me very nervous. 

We closed on the business November 1 and, after much deliberation and research, bought Lena Bea about a month later from Gary DeSantis, who was a friend of Wayne’s, the owner of Sailor’s World Marina on Lake Minnetonka, and the regional Island Packet dealer. Lena Bea was built the summer of 2005 and brought to Sailor’s World in September, where she sat on a cradle at the marina for over a year and had been on display at the 2006 Minneapolis Boat Show.

With the new, larger boat and its modern conveniences (like a microwave oven, large freezer and Vacu-Flush toilets), I began to consider the possibility of doing the entire trip. Only months away, the trip was becoming a reality and I was having second thoughts about missing out on the adventure. I reasoned that, if worse came to worse, Wayne could drop me off somewhere and I could fly home and someone else could fly out to replace me.

Although he was leaning towards the Erie Canal/Hudson River route, Wayne still hadn't decided for certain. He continued to research his options.

Lena Bea was commissioned up in Bayfield, Wisconsin on Lake Superior on May 31, 2007, nearly two years after she was built and six months after we bought her. It was a major operation; the mast and stays alone weighed about 1500 pounds. Realizing the scope of what would be involved in taking the mast down to get under low bridges and putting it back up again gave Wayne second thoughts about the two routes he had in mind. Stepping down the mast is done routinely for boats that make the trip (there are people who will do it for you), but most masts are 10+ feet shorter and much lighter than ours.

So less than two months prior to departure, we finally chose our route and tacked 1500 miles (and a First Mate) on to the voyage. We initially planned to leave August 1; with the change of itinerary we moved it up, but Wayne still had lots of work to do before the boat was ready to go.