IN THE STREAM

Fort Lauderdale, FL

My first column debuted this week in Classic Yacht magazine, a beautiful ezine published every two months. If you've never seen the magazine before, you're in for a treat.

I will be writing about the lessons I have learned while following a dream. We'll see if they promote me from 'novice sailor' somewhere along the way!

OUR STORY: PART III

Fort Lauderdale, FL

On the first day of 2010, I turned 50. We were poised precariously on the edge of our sailing life. The TO DO list created all the way back in 2008 looked like this:

1. Sell the wine shop
XXXX2. Sell the house -- July 31, 2009
3. Sell the current boat
4. Buy our cruising boat.

Not such a great pace we had going when you look at it that way. But in December 2009, we had made an offer on an Island Packet 380 and were waiting for the Chesapeake to thaw out enough for a sea trial. If all went well, we had one item keeping us from sailing away: Sell the wine shop.

Here's how it happened: OUR STORY: 2010.

In case you missed it, the first two parts are here: 2008 :: 2009

OUR STORY: PART II

Fort Lauderdale, FL

What were you doing in 2009? Let me remind you what was going on in the news.

In late 2008, the world economy had taken a 'downturn.' That's 'downturn' as in base jumping. In January 2009, Obama was inaugurated amid total economic chaos. That month 598,000 jobs were lost, followed by  697,000 jobs in February. For perspective here, that's like everyone in Denver losing their jobs in January, all of Detroit in February (perhaps not far from true).

In March? 742,000 jobs. That's Fort Worth. All this was following the loss of 1,738,000 jobs in 2008. That's Philadelphia PLUS Birmingham. From September 2008 to March 2009, 3 million 775 thousand jobs lost with no sign of it stopping.

Also in March, the Dow fell below 7,000 for the first time since 1997.

Everyone was hunkered down, some probably bunkered down to wait out the crisis.

And what were we doing? Trying to sell our house, our business and our old boat.

Here's Our Story went in 2009.

OUR STORY: PART ONE

Fort Lauderdale, FL

We've had some rainy, rainy days here in Fort Lauderdale this week, leaving me lots of time to primp up the blog. There's a new link over there on the left called Our Story, a trilogy.

How did we get from being two ordinary, middle class, middle-aged folks with two teenagers, a house, a business and two cars to living on a sailboat?

Curious? Part One: It all started back in 2005....