Travel Outward: Sailing Outward; Log -- Bumbré's Name

All my life I dreamed of owning a sailboat. Being on the ocean with just the wind and the waves has always given me a feeling of freedom that's hard to match. But until recently this seemed more like a dream than potential reality. As the presures of life set in, jobs, relationships, and whatever the future might bring seemed to take up so much time that there was little left to do much more than dream. After getting married my wife gave me a book to read called Maiden Voyage, by Tania Aebi and Bernadette Brennan. The book is about an 18-year-old girl who circumnavigates the globe with minimal skills on a 26-foot sailboat. Before I read it, I believed doing things like sailing around the world was an unreachable goal for me. Afterward, I realized that sailing long distances under sail doesn't require a large boat and a huge budget. I was energized and started reading and learning all I could on the subject.

After years of talking about it with my wife Jen, and getting more experience on charters and smallers boats, she began to dream about it as well. But going around the world seemed a bit extreme for her. Being on the ocean for weeks on end with no land in sight did not appeal. Jen enjoyed sailing, but the thought of bobbing around at night with just the two of us to keep watch instead of being anchored in a calm harbor was too much. After a few charters in the Caribbean, a new plan was hatched: why not sail from our home in New England to Trinidad, Venezuella, understanding that, if we are satisfied with just sitting in lonely anchorages the Bahamas, we can do just that?

In the fall of 2002, Jen and I bought our first boat--a Cal 28 that had two previous owners, the first having owned the vessel until 1999. It's latest owner traded in the boat, then named Santiago (before that it was named Riptide) in for a bigger Catalina. We found Santiago in a marina in Hewitt's Cove, Hingham, Massachusetts, listed by Eastern Yachts Sales. Amazingly, Santiago was the first boat we saw, after looking at many others we couldn't help but think that she was the one. We looked at her again months later and closed the deal in December 2002

This was to be the beginning of an exhaustive but fulfilling process that would hopefully take us on a cruise from New England to places far away.

If you have any questions about this story or would like more information about Travel Outward, contact us.

If you would like to submit stories or photographs, please email us.