Madman with a Boat

  When I bought my little O'Day 25 I bought it for two reasons: I wanted to work on a boat, and I wanted to go places.
  I think every sailor starts out dreaming, not of helming for hours on end, or huddling below during a thunderstorm (both things I've rather come to enjoy), but they imagine all the wonderful places they could go, things they could do and sights to see. I think it's the glimmering hint of beautiful beaches and bikini'd women that convinces a man to lay down his hard earned money for something as impractical as a boat.
  Up till now, my boat, Cassandra, has gotten very little day-to-day use. I'll splurge and take a week or two trip, and then maybe go out only two or three more times for the year on day sails. Part of the trouble is how far away my boat is from where I live. Wind is free, but the gas to drive an hour in an '85 Pontiac getting 16mpg is prohibitively expensive.
  The other issue is simply this: You don't go anywhere on a day sail. You spend 15 minutes prepping the boat, ten motoring out into the lake, ten hoisting and trimming sails, you sail around for an hour or two, then spend another half hour or more getting the boat put back in it's slip and packed away. Somehow having a destination, someplace to get out, to explore, a new view to wake up to that makes the work worthwhile.
  This is the time of year when dreams come. This time of year, when the store is empty and I have hours upon hours to imagine those far off beaches, making repairs anchored in crystal clear water. I imagine exploring little creeks and inlets up and down the East coast in my little dinghy, Hope (yet to be finished). And so I set myself to thinking. "Why haven't I done it yet; what's stopping me?" In the summer I don't go off for long because I 'need' to work at the store and make money. In winter I work at Syracuse Stage. What's stopping me? New jobs can be found, I have no significant other, I have a boat that sails and is a pleasant home for me. So, what's stopping me? I've decided that I'm really the only thing standing in my way. I have some financial obligations I have to fulfill, but if I can take care of that, all that is left is to screw my courage to the sticking place and go.
  And so I'm announcing my plan. It is my hope that come September 2013 I will cast off and sail down the East coast making my way for the Keys and Bahamas. I don't know how far I may get, or will even want to go. It's been a dream of mine to explore the Outer Banks ever since my family went to Ocracoke and saw the Blackbeard museum. I want to revisit the keys, and to sail a bit of the Texas coast. I want to see Norman's Key in the Bahamas. But most of all I want to go someplace,  I don't much care where.
I'm a madman with a boat, and I want to see what's out there.
 -Brian

A Pause to Reflect

I update sporadically, I'm getting used to this fact. Still, five months after it happened seems a bit lazy to me.
I've half updated my map on google with the approximate route I took and what happened along the way. Dates and stories will come once I get my log book from my parent's house.

Anyway, I wrote this after my first or second day in Cape Vincent. I was feeling very alone, and very unimpressed with myself.

Well, I've done it. I sailed to Cape Vincent. And what have I found here? A quaint little town no more exciting than home. Less. A mess of shops and passing cargo ships reminding me exactly how out of place I feel.
Cassandra feels empty, like her soul left her. I feel empty too.
What was I expecting; some great miracle to give my life purpose? All I see is empty water. I see struggle and meaninglessness, because in the end, what I have done here is nothing. I don't want to go home. I don't want to go anywhere else. I want to stop being. I only feel alone and helpless. I miss Shawna every day. I am happy that she has found the life she wanted, but mine is bleakness without her. I think of finding someone else, anyone... just to feel something again. But I can't. My mind and my heart won't let go, and won't let me abandon the ideals I hold to.
What ideals... if it's all meaningless what does it matter? I don't care anymore... Some irrational part of me tells me "get drunk, screw around, and die." But I know I can't, and I won't.
I'm not a pirate. I'm not an actor. I'm not a craftsman. I'm not a writer. I'm not a gentleman. I'm not a sailor or an expert at anything. I'm not a ruffian, not a vagabond, not a romantic, not pessimist, not optimist, not realist. I'm an aberration. I fit nowhere. My body longs for open spaces, my heart for meaning, my mind for fulfillment, and my soul for it's mate.
I want to be positive, I want to be happy. But that hasn't been me for longer than I can fully remember.. I can pretend, I can put it off, and I can block it out, but when I'm alone, or when I look off into space, my eyes are turning inward, examining what is left, or what there ever was... and I always come back to this reality, always to the person I am, and it is never who I was meant to be.
I can see the man I was, the one I was supposed to be.. he lived before I ever did. He lives still in my dreams, when they come anymore. I wish at times I could just sleep and live in that world I see. Shawna saw it too, and that may be what I miss most... my companion in life and in dreams. I miss living. 

 On reflection though, making it to Cape Vincent, and then on to Mexico Point and my home marina was in many ways fulfilling. I didn't realize at the time, but that trip built up my confidence in my sailing skill, my boat, and myself far more than I knew or imagined it had. I felt so very alone, but it gave me the courage to ask a pretty girl to sit and visit with me for a bit. It showed me how valuable brief meetings and friendships can be. And above all, I accomplished my goal. I made it to Cape Vincent. In five months the disappointment has faded, and left good memories and a will to go on, to do more. I'm in the pre-planning stages of a trip to the Bahamas next winter, if I can get myself, my boat, and my finances up to snuff by then. I remain hopeful.