How is it going for you? Apparently the entire United States will be in a holding pattern for another month. Deep breath, we can do this.

Today I’m going to start a little series about an adventure my family took about three years ago and that continues even today. In the space of eight months we went from novice sailors to owners of a five-cabin catamaran complete with a crew. It’s a lot of fun to think of those days that aren’t really that far behind us, and it helps me to look ahead, too, to a lot more fun times when we are finally “released.”

The adventure began with a graduation, a vacation, and a book…

We always take a summer vacation. It’s typically our “blow-out” travel, where we take the longest and do the most. The summer after our oldest, Matthew, graduated from high school, we knew we wanted a truly restful, private vacation, something that offered real natural beauty, a little adventure, and lots of good family time. No internet would be a bonus.

We chartered a crewed sailboat in the British Virgin Islands for a week. Seven days of the bluest water, sunshine, great food, and empty beaches? Sign us all up.

I have a weird relationship with islands. I have never liked them. Bill and I had visited St. John, USVI, a few years earlier, and my overall memory of that trip was looking across the water at Jost van Dyke and St. Thomas and feeling trapped. I could see where I could go, but there was no easy way to get there. I felt the same way back when we went to Nevis for our honeymoon. Our little eight-seat plane had flown over the tiny island, and then we had circled back in a kind of corkscrew descent to an ancient runway that had chickens running around in place of a ground crew. Bill soaked up the isolation while I grew claustrophobic.

But sailing seemed like an interesting twist. We were all up for it, and I put my unease aside.

We boarded Amazing Lady with swimsuits, sunscreen, and a stack of books. Our crew was a captivating South African couple who seemed happy to meet us and begin our charter, heading out of West End, Tortola. We had a tour of the boat, a lovely 56’ catamaran, including the intricacies of boat toilets and the locations of life preservers, and off we went.

The week was one long idyll of sun and water, card games, endless chats, amazing food, books, and naps. Oh, the naps! The kids might muster themselves on deck for an 8:30 breakfast, but then it was up to the flybridge for a nap while sailing to the next anchorage. Then a swim and another nap and lunch. It was the closest thing to traveling with a bunch of cats that you can imagine. There were times that every lounge area was occupied with a sleeping teenager.

And I read.

The first book I read after arriving on Lady was an out-of-the-way choice, Tim Marshall’s nonfiction Prisoners of Geography. Alfred Mohler had mentioned it on his podcast several weeks earlier as a book worth reading to understand the way history unfolds.

The very first chapter was about islands. My eyes were opened to seeing the world from an ancient sailor’s point of view, and to the realization that the sailor’s view hadn’t changed in millenia. My customary view, the one from 30,000 feet, was the recent one, and the idea of “island hopping” by air was truly unthinkable at the time these islands were settled. The book explained the importance of sailing lanes, and control of shipping, and access to water, and naval defense. I got to read this as I looked out on abandoned sugar mills from British colonial times. I felt how the boat knew the water, saw the path to the next island over water that had been transformed from barrier to highway.

I can’t emphasize enough that transformation. It was revelatory to think of the water as a highway, not as a menace or a block. I began noticing how different towns look when you approach it from the water, how the buildings dance down to the waterfront, how the cliffs and beaches dictate where people live and work.

It was thrilling, and I wanted more. We started quizzing the crew: where else could we go? What were their favorite islands? What was their longest sail? Were they ever scared? The more they told us, the more we knew we wanted to keep sailing.

And then, the questions turned to business: Who owns this boat? How do you get guests? How does the money flow?

Would the crew possibly, maybe, want to change boats?

Could we possibly, maybe, OWN a boat?

The idea that we could travel from island to island, stopping wherever we wanted, swimming, snorkeling, exploring, and then moving on was completely thrilling. The actual sailing was beyond my wildest dreams—it felt elemental, just wind and water, the noises of the sails and the waves. Silky night skies on an inky blue sea, dawns just off an empty white beach…all of it was intoxicating.

I can’t emphasize, too, how perfect our crew was. Friendly but not overly familiar, our kids quickly adopted them as extra family. The last day Darcy was in tears at the thought of leaving her “Ms. Vanessa.” The idea of more sailing only felt real if it included them.

Bill and I briefly talked about buying a boat while still on Lady. But it had been just dipping a toe in the water. We had each (unbeknownst to the other) questioned the crew a little about life on the boat, life with the owner, how someone might find a crew…

Our captain, Roland, has since told me that the moment he knew we might be serious was when I questioned him about boat ownership. He laughed and said, “All the husbands want a boat, but I’d never heard that from a wife. I knew you two were serious when you started asking questions.”

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I’ll continue this series next week. I hope this will be a fun diversion from the news!