After 12 years of painting and selling my own art and 5 plus years of a helluva lot of isolation I realized if I didn't start doing something new and interesting on a regular basis I was going to sink into depression and this wasn't a valid option for me.
Why Sailing? It started with my love of animals. Most of my art is animal themed and if I didn't travel for work so often I would have a house full of animals. But here's the deal, although I LOVE creating art, having to be a traveling salesperson for 12 years isn't really what I want to be doing forever. One of my backup plans was (and still is I suppose) to pack up my house and pack up my car and drive away. But then I thought well, I may as well volunteer somewhere if I am going to quit my art business, so I thought I would love to volunteer with the SeaShepherd. I went to their site and saw that I need sailing experience. And I have none. So I signed up for a 5 week class on Fernridge lake, and learned almost nothing because there was no wind. Plan B: I met with the Marina manager who was super kind and encouraging. He tried to hook me up with people to teach me sailing and because of my shitty summer work schedule where I work ALL the fucking time, I could never actually meet anyone. Plan C) The Cruisers forum I LOVE this site. Really great place to meet people and discuss many sailing related topics. I placed an ad in the Crew Available section, had several replies and two definite possibilities. Either sailing in Bahamas or Thailand. I didn't end up having to choose because the fellow in Thailand ended up postponing his trip, so Bahamas it was. Long story short, After 3 weeks aboard a beautiful 50' ketch with some great people, I still didn't actually get to learn how to sail though I did learn a few knots. My Seashepherd escape plan was becoming further and further away. Another year of slogging around my art at art festivals brings us to today. I kept in email contact with the Thailand fellow who is Australian Malaysian named Ed, and he invited me to come on board his boat, Sade. (Also the name of my cat so I knew the Universe was saying "go ahead"). Do I still want to join the Seashepherd? Maybe, But I have to learn how to sail first.