January, 2021.
As usual, it was a sunny day in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
It was early(ish) in the morning, (I am not a peruser of sunrises like my husband); and while making coffee I peered through the kitchen window, contemplating some of the reasons I loved living in my final home and in Arizona; our ninth address and sixth state in sixteen years. The hummingbirds were flitting angrily at the feeder directly in front of my kitchen window, fighting off the Arizona flicker that perched clownishly upside down while trying to steal some nectar. The flicker, barely able to hang on, resembled a determined but demented squirrel at a bird seed dispenser, claws tenaciously wrapped around small rests not designed for a bird ten times the little hummer’s size. The Gambel quails were on high alert, clusters of them nervously picking through the lawn, their staccato clucking reverberating through the yard. In a few months they would have up to eight tiny little clones of themselves picking with them. My curve billed thrashers; for the third year building a nest in one of my 50 year old yuccas; sat atop my chimney, warbling out a joyous “good morning” song that echoed down and through the house. They always lifted my spirits; I was sure God sent them just to make me smile. When Dean was working away from home, they were my personal melodious golden eyed messengers of joy. The twittering of dozens of red house wrens, some of whose babies were already born in a few of the multiple nests around our property, completed the welcome of a new day. We had various winter visitors; red cardinals, chickadees, gnat catchers, kinglets; many birds I had never seen before. Enormous skies; boundless, cloudless and cerulean blue; were a perfect backdrop to the cacophony. The bird songs of winter mornings in Arizona surprised and delighted me. They were a gift I had not expected.
Our morning routine always included a walk around the yard, checking sprinklers, the pool and our garden, then a sit on the outdoor sofa for a time of prayer. Although the sun was brightly shining, and there were no clouds, a t-shirt and shorts were inadequate clothing for the day. In wintertime, if we went out dressed thus, icy daggers of deceitfully cold air penetrated our skin and headed straight for our bones; the morning temperatures were in the thirties or forties and a jacket was necessary. But despite the chill, it was a perfect Arizona winter morning; and we lived in paradise.
So let the reader understand: this was the home of which I stated, “This is it. They will have to carry me out, in a box, cold and stiff. I will never move again.” And I meant it.
On that January morning, it had been seven months since the lock downs began. Thanks to COVID, and I mean that sincerely, Dean was really home for the first time in six years. New Mexico, where Dean had been working, had sent workers home in March of 2020 in the hopes of limiting the spread until more about the novel virus was learned. Having my spouse at home every day was a blessing that I had prayed for; to have him home 24/7 was blissful. (In retrospect, I obviously need to be more careful what I pray for.) That morning, he was ensconced in his usual spot, the recliner on the right, laptop open, heavily engrossed in whatever it was that he was immersed in reading. I brought him his second cup of coffee and sat down in the recliner to his left; my spot.
Quiet. I waited for him to share what he was thinking, as he always did.
What he shared that morning turned our lives upside down….
But first, back to September, 2020. In my previous post, “Look at this Boat”, I mentioned a boat Dean wanted me to see. “Marae” (hot link) was that boat. She is an Alloy like Eclipse, elegantly appointed and at 108’, slightly bigger, built some thirteen years and six or seven boats later. When Dean said to me that day, “hey, look at this boat”, he was showing me a boat he wanted to charter. (I think.)
Growing up in Newport Beach, California, and having been on many beautiful yachts, I will confess that I am somewhat of a boat snob. I have very distinct ideas of what I consider a beautiful and well built boat, most of them very traditional, with lots of teak, sleek lines and a deep “V” hull for cutting through the ocean. Part of the reason for that is for two summers, I worked cleaning boats. It was the only job I ever had that I worked wearing a bikini. Anyway, that job left me intimately familiar with the hazards of cheap builds and the beauty of quality. Corrosion at the screws, badly done fiberglass, top heavy, oddly shaped windows, lacquer interiors, shoddily sealed leaking windows, pitted stainless; all were signs of a cheap boat and definitely not to my standards. If what I could see was bad, then what I could not see was even worse. I learned that “penny wise and pound foolish” was spectacularly true in the marine industry; “cheap” was expensive to continually repair and could be deadly if an emergency arose at sea; the ocean is completely unforgiving. It was easy after two summers to immediately characterize a well built (i.e. more expensive) boat from a cheap one. I was pretty skeptical about what a man who had been raised in the desert and whose main experience on a vessel was a 300 plus foot Navy frigate would consider a “nice” boat. But when I saw the photos and read about Marae, his boat of choice, I was gobsmacked; she was gorgeous; lines, interior, capability; an amazingly designed and built vessel.
After 16 years, my husband still managed to surprise me.
It was at this point that I started researching Alloy Yachts, a name that I had never encountered in Newport Beach. Newport was more about “stink pots", (power boats); serious world class sailing yachts were few and far between. To be honest, I had never seen anything like Marae in Newport Harbor. There were several beautiful 70 - 80 foot sailboats, but nothing in her class. What I did not know was that at that point, Dean had already been eyeballing her for months and had done quite a bit of research on Alloy Yachts; all he wanted was my buy in on the boat, the timing and the cost to charter, which was a quantum leap from what we had previously spent on charters in the Caribbean.
Of course I heartily approved; all we had to do was set a date; but at the time, the BVI’s were putting ankle bracelets on boaters to track them and we were not interested in that. No decision was made that day, but unbeknownst to me, a kernel of an idea was germinating in the fertile fields of my husband’s brilliant, NOT INSANE AT ALL, (so I believed then), mind. He would later tell me that it was more than an idea: it felt like a direct edict from God. It was a compulsion so powerful that it became almost painful; the longer he failed to act, the more urgent and heavy the compulsion became. But it was also one I did not share, which for us is rare.
In retrospect, as I put the pieces together, sometime between September and November of 2020, the love of my life got an idea planted in his heart and brain that was so absurd, so ridiculous, so outrageous, had such pure audacity, that when he first mentioned it, I literally laughed. Out loud.
I cannot recall the exact day of his pronouncement. I had no warning; not an earthly clue that morning when, during coffee and after strolling through the yard, he stated as nonchalantly as he would if he were talking about the weather, “honey, when I retire, I think I want to buy a boat like Marae. And live on it. And sail the world.”
(Insert long, long, awkward silence). “What? …… Really? …… What?”
The subject was dropped pretty quickly.
But Dean and his compulsion were not to be thwarted by any piteous objections or avoidance. Over the months; unbeknownst to me; Dean, who had never owned a boat, let alone gone sailing, kept looking at sailboats. He was regularly watching YouTube videos and reading articles and blogs about sailing; gathering knowledge……and ammunition. Although I did not give it much thought; it was the holiday season and I had many things to plan for the family; the subject kept coming back. He would make little comments here and there; letting me know that for him, the subject was not off the table. I should have paid more attention.
That is the stage that was set in January, 2021. COVID restrictions, on their 23rd “two week” stretch, had called a halt to life as everyone knew it. Lock downs were becoming increasingly tiresome and were effecting the health and mental well being of everyone we knew. We had close family in California; one of the most tyrannical and restrictive states. We had sneaked around to spend time with them, but the shutdowns made memories of a normal life depressing to think about. The emergency powers politicians granted themselves, coupled with the oppression they forced on everyone, allowed petty political tyrants to indulge their every tyrannical fantasy and controlling urge. After witnessing the glee with which our overlords crushed common people with absurd rules and laws, it was clear that at some point; tyrants being tyrants and having had a taste of that power; those restrictions would happen again. The thought of some real “freedom”, something we all had previously taken for granted, was very appealing. In light of the winter, fall and summer of our discontent, that germinating seed became a full blown Giant Redwood.
Now back to January, 2021.
As non-chalantly as can be, right in the middle of a civilized cup of coffee, Dean said, “Honey, I think I found a boat I want to look at. It’s an Alloy like Marae.”
This topic was closed, or so I thought. I was dumbstruck into silence. For those who know me, they will appreciate how rare that is. “What is he thinking??” my mind yelled.
After a long pause, with thoughts running through my head like “has he lost his friggin mind?” I quietly answered, “Okay honey, send me the link…..I’ll take a look.”….”By the way, where is she?”; thinking that a trip to the East Coast or Florida was inevitable.
To my utter and complete shock and surprise, he answered. “Newport Beach”.
I have to admit, at that moment; and despite me pushing this thought into a hole and stomping on it like Daffy Duck stomped on Bugs Bunny’s head when Bugs took the right turn instead of the left at Albuquerque and ended up in Aladdin’s Cave; I had an eerie and overwhelming feeling of inevitability that still gives me chills to this day.
Seriously. We were in no position to look at a boat. At all. There were so many issues with buying a boat, especially at that time, that it is amusing for me to list them. I could write an entire post just on that; but in the interest of brevity, I will only list the top three.
First and foremost, the expense. We could purchase her; but anyone who has owned a boat knows that keeping and maintaining a boat, especially one like Eclipse, costs far more than simply owning her. A general rule of thumb is the cost is 10% of the purchase price, per year; but that only applies to new boats. (We doubled that amount for planning purposes and we still came up short.) It turns out that used boats cost less, but should be cost analyzed at their replacement cost, not their price; a calculation we misunderstood at the time. Our investment in Tesla had paid off beyond our wildest dreams, but I knew we were talking about real money now. I had been a private banker. I had been around rich people my whole life. I’d owned boats. I knew what kind of money we needed; and we did not have that kind of money. I argued endlessly, (and futilely) that we simply could not afford her.
Second, Dean had been bid on a project in Idaho that came with a three year commitment. The announcement of the winner was due in March, but in twenty five years, the DOE had never once met a deadline. COVID took that normal delay to a new level of absurd. We could not make an offer on anything until we knew if we would be living in Idaho again, (a thought I did not relish). So if Dean’s company won, which they had a good chance of doing, the boat/retirement idea was dead. In other words, we were currently in no position to make any decisions.
Third, I did not want to sell the house or move. The thought of selling; and especially moving; made me sick. (I had already moved three times by myself). At the beginning of the lock downs, we hired a well known amazing architect to draw up renovation plans of our house; and the pictures in my head, coupled with his evolving drawings, were of the house of my dreams. The location of our house was one of the best in Paradise Valley. We had total privacy on our acre plus lot, thirty undeveloped acres behind us, unforgettable views and total quiet in the center of the fifth largest city in the United States. We had A.J.’s and restaurants and amazing shopping and the symphony and museums and sports teams and our favorite golf courses; and I knew that we would never have a house in a location like that again. Plus, just the idea of moving and I started to have symptoms of PTSD. There would be no “home” for the kids to spend holidays with us. The entire house was set up for company. Living on a boat?? The packing, the logistics, storage, getting mail, filing taxes…the administrative challenges would be endless and they would fall on me. I did not want to sell the house, and we could not have both the house and the boat. I could not even consider it.
And you already know how effective those arguments were, because here we are. Regardless of those reasons, and more, I insanely agreed to go and just “see” the boat. What the heck; we couldn’t buy her anyway and we could see my dad and some friends and have a nice weekend in Newport. So with a bit of web research, I chose a yacht broker in Newport to take us to see Eclipse and get more information for us.
It was on January 20, 2021 that we made the appointment. On March 6, we would go get a real life look at Eclipse. The “seed” was germinating; if I knew then what I know now, I never would have agreed to go, which is why God kept me blissfully ignorant. I could not even imagine in my wildest dreams just how actually crazy we were going to get. Of course we had no idea how God was working behind the scenes. We had no idea of the ways God was going to use Eclipse to put His glory and provenance on display, or to shape us and grow our faith in monumental ways. Things were happening in the world….
To be continued…..