Last summer, while driving to Oregon to meet Kevin's family he said, "Let's take a year to go on a sailing trip." That was an idea that I had thought about a lot, but it had never been more than an idea I might do 'someday' when it was the 'right' time. I could have replied with an empty, "Yeah, that'd be fun." Instead, I really heard his words as a possibility and I responded, " Yeah, let's do that! "

That was how this all started. An unreasonable idea of taking a year off turned into an amazing possibility. I really wanted to sail the ocean, so I told him that I did!

We started with our goal. Within 5 years we are going to take a year or two off to sail the ocean south, maybe ending up in Guatemala to visit our sponsor child's family.

Then we worked backwards, asking ourselves, "What would we need to do 1 week before our blue water trip? What would we need to do 6 months before our trip? What would we need to do 1 year before our trip? Two years? Three years? What do we need to do today?"

We have a working list of what we're doing to prepare and the things we're learning about blue water sailing and each other along the way. This blog is a public and interactive record of our list. Right now we are adding more things to the list than crossing things off, but we've started the journey!

Step One: buy a boat together........check!
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