KATE GILGAN Resisting The Pull of The Big Pond: Advantages of Cruising Home Waters
Abigail and Henry enjoying breakfast underway as we transit from Gibsons, British Columbia to Sergeant Bay, British Columbia along the Sunshine Coast.
“You
guys
live
on
your
sailboat?”
“Yes. All four of us”, I answer, scanning the shoreline to keep track of my six and fiveyear-old, who have hit the beach with bottle rocket fervor after three solid days of rainfall. “Oh how exciting. So where have you sailed to?” It’s the inevitable question. People want to hear about crossing oceans. Crystalline tropical anchorages. Crew lazing about the cabin top under makeshift sunshades. Bare feet and starry nights set to acoustic guitar. Albatross. Dolphins. Flying fish. And who doesn’t like a good storm story? Their faces fall as I tell them, “Not far, actually. We mainly explore around home.” In the shadows of career exhaustion, and tired of our shared over-consumption, my husband and I left ‘normal’ eight years ago. We packed up our apartment, stashed our stuff in a storage locker, and moved aboard
Skibo, our Contessa 26, to find out if our well -meaning family and friends were right – were we crazy? We fell hard and fast for the romance of the sea, having soon thereafter given up our coveted marina slip in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for the lure of life on the hook. Where my days once consisted of errands on the commute home, dinner parties for eight, and regular appointments at the hair salon, I was now thrust into a world of monitoring water tanks, solar panel configuration, and learning how to row a dinghy. My husband Michael, inspired by Lin and Larry Pardey’s “go small, go now” wisdom, had removed Skibo’s ever-failing clamorous diesel engine and replaced it with a sleek and, admittedly, somewhat underpowered three horsepower electric golf cart motor that pushed us along at a modest two knots. The unintended gift of its modesty meant that we both had to learn how to sail in any, and all, conditions. SisterShip 8
