This is a continuation of the story I began last Monday of how we came to own a catamaran in the Caribbean. It’s a story about stepping out, and taking a chance, and doing something new, and doing it TOGETHER. Our marriage is a lifetime of one of us having a wild hare, the other saying, “Yes, LET”S!!” And then doing the thing.

This thing was maybe the most out-there. A vacation home, a new business, a completely new world we were venturing into…we rarely do anything in small steps.

It helps to understand who we were back in 2016 and 2017. My precious husband loves his work. He is good at it and he does it a lot. He isn’t one of those guys with a couple of hobbies; he has always enjoyed his work and never saw a need to diversify. His talents and creativity were precisely matched to building his company. It was pretty amazing to have a front row seat to that over the years. If pressed, I’d have to say that his hobbies were limited to storytelling, enjoying epic dinners with the kids and planning amazing family vacations.

In the winter of 2016, his work situation turned dramatic. An entrepreneur his entire life, Bill finally had a boss at the ripe old age of 50 when he and his partner sold the company in 2013. Reporting to someone else, even as CEO of the company, was an enormous adjustment. I had spent our entire married life being his sounding board and encourager, but I could not encourage him out of his anxiety over having a boss. He couldn’t say no to the board—at least, he didn’t think he could.

During December of 2016, Bill’s company owners decided to sell to another private equity firm, pushing the transaction to happen in under thirty days. This is crazy timing; most transactions take sixty-ninety days without the holidays. Worse, the timing interfered with family plans to go to Vienna, Austria, right before Christmas. All three of our high schoolers were going on a music performance tour, and we had decided much earlier in 2016 that it would be fun to go along.

On December 14, I boarded the plane with our four kids and 120 of our closest school friends. Bill said he’d come the next day…except he didn’t. Or the next. Or the next.

He didn’t come at all, in spite of his assurances that he would be there. It was incredibly disappointing. We’d been planning the trip for a year, and the kids were performing in once-in-a-lifetime venues like Salzburg Cathedral and Schoenberg Palace.

I didn’t handle it well. Bill had (and he admits this now) decided that he couldn’t put any boundaries on his personal time. He never had before, but he had also never had a boss who would take everything he could give and still say, “More.” The stress from the three years of working for someone else came to a head.

When we returned home, the transaction still wasn’t complete. He had calls on Christmas Eve and every day after Christmas, up until New Year’s Eve. And then, voila, new bosses. Fortunately, Bill recognized that he had to go into this next working relationship differently than he had the first.

That spring, we worked on rebuilding our own relationship, and we focused on the kids, especially our oldest. We also wanted to do something together, so we began tending the garden in our new house. Working together on something helped us to carve out time together and share a goal and a few low-key decisions.

Spring raced by, the new bosses were pretty great, our oldest son graduated high school, and we went sailing.

I remember one morning in our cabin, towards the end of the trip.

“We could do this,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, okay. I’ll talk to Roland.”

And from very small conversations, big adventures start.

We spent a few days at home looking over the numbers, looking over the maps, and overlooking everything else going on in our lives. This adventure was lining up. A call to our crew to gauge their interest was met with an enthusiastic “Yes!” We hastily booked another trip to the BVI, this time to chat more face-to-face and to look at boats.

In the summer of 2017, the BVI was home to a huge proportion of the world’s charter sailboats and catamarans. If you were looking to buy or sell, Tortola was a pretty great place to be. We scheduled a look at several catamarans while we were down in July. We ended up finding a terrific boat, an immaculately maintained 58’ catamaran with five cabins and a gorgeous flybridge. A lunch and a dinner with our crew to hash out details and we were all set. We made an offer on the boat as soon as we got home.

Just to take another look at that timing: we took our first trip in mid-June, a second trip to have a look in mid-July, and by early August we had made an offer and were working on the contract for an early September boat purchase. We had also reached an agreement with our crew and had a starting date on the calendar. Yes, that is fast.

Bill made two more trips to the BVI during August to push the deal forward. Buying a boat is a good deal more complicated than a house purchase! We had to schedule inspections, repairs and changes to the boat, negotiate what stayed, and work out the sale with the banks, brokers, and the BVI government. Note that he was able to take these trips AND help move our oldest to New Orleans for college in spite of also working as CEO.

When Bill came home in late August, there was a storm forming in the Atlantic. It looked to be a hurricane, but the path was uncertain. And we weren’t worried—Tortola hadn’t taken a direct hit from a hurricane in many, many years. “Everyone” knew all the hurricane holes, safe spaces to keep the boats in, and this would blow over. We would be back to business in a couple of days. We weren’t concerned.

We had a contract closing date of Friday, September 7, 2017.

Hurricane Irma hit Tortola on Wednesday, September 5.

On Tuesday, our crew called to say they had stored their current boat, Amazing Lady, and had decided to weather the storm in a Tortola hotel. It was a drastic move but they decided it was the safer route. They left nearly all their personal items on Lady, tied and anchored her, and hunkered down. The storm was forecasted to pass north, over the sparsely-populated island of Anegada, but the hotel would be a nice respite from the wind.

The storm didn’t hit Anegada. Tortola took a direct hit from a Category 5 storm.

Wednesday morning. Bill went to work, and I kept an eye on the weather. Reports were hard to come by, but in time we realized where Irma was headed. The storm’s front wall hit Tortola. We held our breath, worried about our crew. Roland called us at dinner time to tell us they were in the eye. They were okay so far, but couldn’t get out to see any boat. Then he had to hang up; the storm was starting again.

That was the last we heard from them for four long days.

This part is really Roland and Vanessa’s story to tell. When we finally did hear from them, they were in Puerto Rico, trying to get to the Dominican Republic (where they own a condominium). We were so relieved!

But our prospective boat didn’t fare so well. She had been “on the hard,” out of the water for a full inspection. Cheek-to-jowl with other boats stored on land, Irma had toppled them over like so many dominos. She was in the middle of a jumble of boats. Our deal was dead.

Come back next week for more of my epic tale!