Moving Toward the Dream

The first marina where we docked Celtic Dream was on the South River just below Annapolis. It was convenient to our house, a mere 25 minute drive depending on traffic. You have to say "depending on traffic" whenever you judge distance by travel time in the DC/Baltimore area because it can vary by hours! Now, when I say marina, I'm using the term very loosely.

There were docks with security gates and that was a plus considering that the bar that was on the property usually ended the weekend nights with police presence. The "bath house" was conveniently located under said bar and the locks on the doors seldom worked. Nothing is more exciting than being in the shower and hearing a bunch of drunk 20 somethings either, crying, screaming or puking. The highlight of the "bath house" was that the changing area just outside the shower curtain was open to the rest of the bathroom, making the odds of you inadvertantly becoming that night's entertainment pretty good. Thank God Celtic Dream has 2 decent showers.

That leads us to the water situation. The water on the docks was foul. Our showers usually reeked of sulfur and the ice from the ice maker was always a lovely shade of gold. God forbid you rinsed your boat off with it. The resulting copper stains looked far worse that the salt buildup did! We finally bought a fancy water softener/filtration device. The booklet said that the filter could soften 1,000 gallons of water before it would have to be recharged. We couldn't even make it to 300 gallons before having to throw away the filter.

The electric wasn't much better. Several times a month the electricity would just go out and they'd have to call either the local electric company or some fly by night electrician who looked like he might have been homeless. The end result was that you could be without electricity for a couple hours or a couple days. It was anybody's guess.

Our slip faced the public access ramp. At first we found this endlessly entertaining. We would make it our happy hour routine to go out on the sunpad on the bow and sit and watch the hapless masses defying logic and physics while trying to get their boats out of the water. It was like a live version of America's Funniest Home Videos right there in our front yard! Of course it's all fun and games until some yahoo wakes your boat in the middle of the night so hard that you think it was surely a collision. Then there was the ignorant meat heads in cigarette boats that had to rev their engines for a half hour at the ramp before hauling ass through the no wake zone. Ah yes, good times!

The best part of our entire experience was the "management" team at the marina. Again, I'm using the term "management" very loosely. The "manager" actually lived on the property in an apartment over the office which seemed like a plus at first. We liked the idea of someone always being there especially when we were not. It turns out that the management plan for the marina was modeled after a frat party. When he wasn't out in his fishing boat, the manager could usually be found at the bar, which left the poor high school girl at the desk in charge of things. At the very least they could have given her a book of nautical terms so she could appear to be speaking our language. English was of course her first language but apparently her only response to any inquiry was "I'll have to ask the manager." This rendered her useless for anything other than collecting money for a bag of ice. When you were actually lucky enough to corner the manager and ask him a question, he would give you any answer he thought you wanted to hear, which had absolutely nothing to do with reality.

For example, the road leading down to the marina was a complete cow path. It had pot holes inside of pot holes that could swallow a car whole. So one day, after I got a flat tire because one of the pot holes tried to swallow my front tire, I asked if there were any plans for repaving the road. I was told that he was currently getting bids to have not only the road but the entire sinking parking lot repaved (It flooded at high tide regularly). He went on and on about how great it was going to be. I had only known him for a couple of months so I believed him. That was 3 years ago and when I recently drove some friends to that marina to pick up their car it still hadn't been repaved. I managed to escape without having to re-tire my car.

There were a few water men that kept their boats at the marina and we noticed that they were fueling their boats at the docks. I found this odd since we were right across the river from a fuel dock where we usually fueled up. The next thing we know there were several boats regularly putting fuel in their boats at the dock. I don't find this to be a safe practice and in previous weeks 2 boats had exploded while fueling near our marina. Paul is a retired firefighter and he was totally uncomfortable with them doing it anywhere near our boat. I brought this to the attention of the "manager" and he feigned being appalled by the notion and vowed to put an end to it. Not a week later we saw him standing there drinking a beer while someone on the same dock fueled their boat.

Now, my husband Paul and I are about as laid back as they come. We mind our own business and tend to just go with the flow. We're not demanding by any means so any one of these "inconveniences" taken alone would probably not have bothered us. Unfortunately, after 2 years of all of this, day in and day out, our patience was wearing thin. 

On Memorial Day Weekend of 2013 we had planned to stay on the boat for a nice long weekend. We got up in the morning and I was up on the aft deck starting to cook some bacon while Paul was below starting the coffee. That's when Paul realized that we had no power. Again. My bacon had started to cook but was now cooling. We went to the office to find out what was going on and were told that the power was turned off so that the "electrician" could work on it. On a holiday weekend???!!! I was furious! When we came out of the office we saw the electrician/homeless guy fumbling mindlessly with a breaker. 

That, my friends, was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. This whole situation was ruining my dream. If every time we came here to get away we left pissed off then we were not going to spend another minute in this dump! We packed up our half cooked bacon and went home and spent the rest of the weekend looking at marinas.

A week later, after I got home from work, we pulled in our lines and fenders and left in an approaching storm. Paul and I are typically very conservative when it comes to boating. We try to never go out in bad conditions and both knew that we should have waited but it was supposed to be nasty all weekend and we just couldn't bear another wasted weekend spent there. It was 6:30 in the evening, the wind was picking up and the sky was getting dark. I looked at the radar and figured we had about an hour before all hell broke loose. We looked at the charts and figured we had a small weather window and could just make it. We started hauling ass down the South River, headed to our new home at Herrington Harbour North. 

When we got out into the Chesapeake Bay it was even darker and we were running against a punishing head wind in at least 4' seas. The only other boats on the bay were a couple of freighters heading up to Baltimore, and for good reason! The conditions were getting worse and were slowing us down, our weather window was closing fast. To make matters worse, we had never been to Herrington Harbour North by boat and were unfamiliar with the approach. The markers are typically tricky to spot unless you know where to look for them and as the blinding rain started it became almost impossible so we had to rely on the chart plotter for the last leg of the trip. We finally spotted the red marker and made the hairpin turn into Herring Bay and basically surfed our way up to to Herrington Harbour North. Captain Paul did an amazing job making the 3 right angle turns through the unfamiliar thoroughfare in high wind to get us safely into our slip. We were soaked to the bone by the time we wrestled the lines to the dock and sat down to have a beer. We were exhausted by then but confident that we were moving in the right direction toward our Celtic Dream.

All Because Two People Shared a Dream

I always knew that someday I would have my own boat and that I’d live on it and cruise around the islands. I was only 8 at the time but I knew it like I knew my own name. I’d think about it every time I climbed onto my grandfather’s little 16 ft. boat, the Li-Da-Pa. He’d let me drive it every now and then and it thrilled me to no end. I was never happier than when I was on the water in that little boat. I loved everything about it; the sun glinting off the water in the morning; the smell of the salt air; and yes, even the smell of the docks when we came back in. The sea called to my young heart loud and clear and someday I would answer that call in my own boat.

Sadly, four years later my grandfather died unexpectedly and with him went my sea faring adventures. The Li-Da-Pa sat in my uncle’s yard on a trailer rotting into disrepair. Every time I saw it those great memories of being on the water would flood back to me, pulling at my heart. It would be years before I’d be back on boats but every summer I’d sit on the beach watching the boats go by, dreaming my dream. Someday….

The business of adult life carried on and if not for summers at the beach dreaming my dream it may have all but vanished. I have lived near Annapolis and worked in Washington, DC my whole life so I’ve spent many hours walking the docks looking at the yachts and wondering what it must be like to live the dream. It was surely out of my reach at the time but I just knew that someday that would be me.

When I turned 30 I became a certified scuba diver and once again found myself vacationing on boats but this time I was on boats in the Caribbean. Life on the water in paradise! It was just how I imagined it would be! I looked in awe at the people living on the boats as we passed by. They were living my dream. How did they do it? I talked to anyone who would give me the time of day, asking them to tell me their story, trying to find clues as to how to make my dream come true. It seemed that unless I was independently wealthy or won the lottery I was just going to have to keep dreaming my dream. But some day it was going to come true…. I just knew it.

When my mother remarried, she married a retired naval officer who loved boating. They bought a 42’ Grand Banks and began living the dream! I would go out with them any chance I could. My step-father taught me how to navigate while my mom taught me the ins and outs of living aboard and line handling. I’d spend long weekends and vacations with them as often as I could, soaking up information from them like a sponge. I loved staying on board with them. The lifestyle suited me better than I thought it would, if only for brief periods.

I was 46 when I met my soul mate, Paul. I never imagined that my soul mate would be wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes but it was fate and fate decides itself. We didn’t know we were soul mates at first, that came later, but when I told him of my dream of retiring, selling everything I owned, buying a boat and cruising to the islands, I saw a little spark in his eyes. He was a dreamer too! Did I mention that Paul lived in Michigan? He had grown up fishing the Great Lakes and was no stranger to boating. As it turns out, he had a similar dream but he was going to buy an RV and see the country. He said that cruising sounded just as good, if not better so we began sharing the dream.

We had a long distance relationship for 3 years and in 2010 Paul froze his retirement, moved to Maryland and we got married, overlooking the water at my parent’s yacht club. At that time I still had 6 more years before I could retire from my federal job and he still had 2 years before he could collect his retirement. But the dream was getting closer than either of us could have imagined.

In the spring of 2011 the boating market was at an all-time low and it occurred to us that we should probably finance a boat while we still had jobs so we started looking. We got pre-approved for financing and had our down payment in the bank. It was a buyer’s market so it should have been a piece of cake. Having never bought a boat before, we had no idea what to expect. I assumed it would be like buying a car. Find one you like, sign the papers and drive away. We poured over listings and websites until we figured out what we wanted. The first couple of boats we looked at we contacted the seller’s broker for the showing. I remember standing on the fly bridge of the first boat looking at the overflowing ashtrays and empty beer cans in the cup holders thinking “Are we on the right boat?” I was horrified when we went below and found the galley sink full of encrusted, dirty dishes and heads that looked like they hadn’t seen a toilet brush in years! I can’t imagine what it would have looked like if they weren’t trying to sell it! We were totally disheartened.

A week later when we looked at a second boat, it was more of the same. Now I was mad. These people had the dream in their hands! I had spent my entire life yearning for what they had and they were throwing it away like some toy they had tired of! I felt like they were somehow disrespecting my dream.

Next we decided to hire a broker, figuring he could save us from looking at boats that weren’t in any shape to buy. We looked at several other boats and it seemed to be going well until we found one that we wanted to put a contract on. We were told that nobody had even looked at the boat in over a year and it would be just a matter of signing the papers. Miraculously however, the day we decided to make an offer, another mystery buyer appeared and a bidding war started. It went higher than our budget would allow so we backed out. 9 months later that particular boat was still on the market. We subsequently fired our unscrupulous broker and went about looking on our own.

In July of 2011, one week after my 50th birthday, we found our dream. Celtic Dream is a 40’ Maxum SCA Motor Yacht. She needed a lot of work and some TLC but we’ve found that when nurturing our dream we’ve got an endless supply of that. When we did our renaming ceremony, Paul played the bagpipes on her bow while I offered bottled spirits to the Gods, humbly asking for safe passage and calm seas. It really was a dream come true.

Paul and I have been living on Celtic Dream 9 months out of the year on the Chesapeake Bay, south of Annapolis. Paul has since retired and I commute to my job in DC. In a few more years we’ll be ready to take off so we decided to put the house up on the market and move aboard full time. We’re planning on doing the Great Loop and then heading down the Caribbean chain, living our Celtic Dream. So if you’re sitting on the docks and you hear the skirl of bagpipes in the distance, it just may be us on the horizon. It may have taken nearly 50 years to realize my dream but the wait was totally worth it because now I get to share it with my soul mate. I never lost sight of my dream and, despite the odds, it came true. Never lose sight of yours!