Gotta Get Out There

At Home Afloat- bahamas

It should not come as a shock that living aboard a sailboat year round in New England is kinda like A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Summer in Newport is gorgeous. Perfect in fact. However, we pay for that during the winter. (Blizzard Nemo, I'm looking at you.) And while my husband, Green, the girls, and I have gotten pretty good at the winter liveaboard thing, it's painful to think about how nice it would be to be sailing over to, say, the Bahamas right about now.

This winter, however, we've been lucky to have the opportunity to do some sailing- not on our own boat, but on a fancy new catamaran. The captain of this fancy new catamaran—a just-launched-in-France Nautitech 542—is my brother-in-law, Jesse (no, he doesn't own the boat), which has been super nice for the family. First, Green and my mother-in-law joined Jesse and some other crew on a transatlantic from the Canaries to the Caribbean in December, and now I'm flying down to Florida (the boat's in the Strictly Sail Miami show) next week to sail with Jesse on the cat to the Bahamas. I cannot begin to explain how excited I am.

I'm also a little surprised that this is happening at all. Just two weeks ago, maybe less, I was whining to Green that I wanted to sail someplace warm and how fun it would be to go sailing with Jesse. And he replied, "So why don't you go?"

He quickly shooed away my concerns about leaving the kids, so I immediately sent Jesse an email. And now, I'm staring at the calendar (which, of course, has  a photo of a cat sailing someplace warm this month) on the wall of my cubicle and realizing that in five days I will be at the airport right now- yay! Since Jesse and the rest of the crew are all sailing on to Puerto Rico, and I just can't be gone that long, I'll be jumping ship in George Town, on Great Exuma, Bahamas. The logistical nightmare of flying home from a Bahamian out island means I'll be flying on four (maybe five?) different planes on my way home. Something tells me that I should not check a bag.

So if you see a woman at TF Green airport next Tuesday wearing a foul-weather jacket and a really big backpack, you'll know who it is. My about-to-be-sailing-in-turquoise-water smile should give it away.