Sailing Mystic Hearts

To understand how we got to where we are today living aboard, we should first go back to the beginning. Our beginning.

How We Met

Paul and I met as undergraduate students at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. He had just begun his senior year in engineering and I just started my sophomore year in communication. Music brought us together. Paul was the lead guitarist in a local rock band and I was a disc jockey at the college radio station. In a chance meeting, I ran into his band’s keyboardist at a central place on campus and was handed a demo CD. I obviously loved the music and began spinning their record on my show and we met shortly thereafter at a party. The connection was instantaneous and we dated the rest of my undergraduate career and throughout Paul’s time in graduate school. Fast forward three years after meeting and we were engaged, and married a year later. We’ve currently been together just over 13.5 years and married 9.5 years.

Our Love of the Water

We both grew up loving the ocean. Every anniversary we’ve planned a special trip to a beach. Our vacations always take us somewhere coastal. Being by the water makes us happy. In 2010, we took a sailing lesson on a small Sunfish on a lake in Raleigh. This was our first taste of sailboats. After college, work relocated us to coastal Virginia. In 2012, we bought our first sailboat, a 1976 Irwin 25 named Gabriel (who we affectionately called Gabe). In 2013, we bought a home on a deep water canal and parked Gabe out back. Since we lived on the Chesapeake Bay, we used Gabe to putz around on weekend afternoons. By 2015, we were ready to travel further by sail. We sold Gabe and in 2015 bought a 1972 Pearson 33 named Mistress (we quickly changed the name to Rocinante). Paul added an arch, we bought a dinghy, and made minor upgrades to the boat. We finally took it to Cape Charles to celebrate our anniversary in 2017 and felt the thrill of sailing across the Chesapeake Bay in pursuit of adventure. Rocinante wasn’t the most comfortable boat, and we started discussing the possibility of sailing further up the Chesapeake Bay in a boat more apt for cruising. Before we took that first adventure to Cape Charles, and perhaps what inspired our desire to travel more by sailboat, was our discovery of sailing videos on YouTube by couples that felt similar to us. Suddenly the thought of sailing near and far felt more in reach. We started researching charter destinations and what it would look like to sail outside the country. Paul decided that we should sail in the British Virgin Islands, so in May 2018 we finally chartered a Beneteau 38.1 with BVI Yacht Charters. That trip was nothing short of magical. I highly recommend it! Apparently on that trip (and I don’t recall this other than what Paul has told me), I said, “I could live on a sailboat one day.” We returned from our trip and toyed with the idea. We had been attending the Annapolis Sailboat Show every year since 2016, and suddenly, trips to the Sailboat Show took on a new meaning. We began to look at boats differently, analyzing the construction, number of cabins, and what features would be important to have on a boat. And over the next year and a half to two, we went back and forth about a thousand times on whether we should live on a boat, whether we should just wait until retirement to live on a boat, if it “made sense” to live on a boat, and came up with every excuse why we shouldn’t live on a boat.

The Dilemma

Since owning our home, we were in a constant state of renovation as we moved room by room and updated paint, flooring, fixtures, and ultimately renovated the kitchen and all bathrooms. As our home got closer to perfection, we thought, “Let’s buy a cruising boat since we no longer have to fix up the house.” We considered this option for awhile, but ultimately decided it wasn’t the right move for us. This home became in so many ways our dream home. I couldn’t believe we owned a home on the water, fully renovated it over the course of 7 years, lived in a quiet neighborhood, and were living the “American dream.” This was the home I pictured us raising a family in and growing old together. I felt guilty that I wanted a change. When we decided we wouldn’t buy a cruising boat to keep at our house, we went back to the idea of living aboard. We went back to charter in the British Virgin Islands in December 2019 with family, and that trip finally confirmed we were making the right decision for us. Before that trip we listed our home, but it sat for 8 months on the market with no offers. To be fair, the market was slow in general, so when our contract ended we removed the listing. We felt discouraged, and then the COVID-19 pandemic began. We began to doubt ourselves and decided to just stay in our beautifully renovated home. We started a garden and began to enjoy a socially distant spring. I was quickly laid off from my new job and had more time to think about what we really wanted in this life. “What’s most important? What will make us happy? Should we take a risk? If not now, when?” We decided to take the risk. A realtor friend listed our home and we quickly received multiple offers by July. We already had our eyes on two separate Beneteau 473 sailboats and were just trying to decide which one we should go with. Our house closed in late August 2020 and the sailboat was not quite ready for us to close on. We stayed in a hotel for two weeks while the boat received a bottom coat of paint and our paperwork was prepared. Labor Day weekend we finally moved aboard.

Our Journey Begins

Now that we’ve gone back to the beginning, we’ll tell our story of life aboard Mystic Hearts, our 2005 Beneteau 473.