My wife Celia and I (Todd) have been together for over 15 years as of this writing, and we had often talked about doing some extended cruising… “someday”. However, we were strongly invested in our lives and careers in the fabulous Florida Keys and were not sure when that day would come. I had lived in the Lower Keys and Key West most of the last twenty years after originally coming to Big Pine Key for an internship in 1997. Celia came for the same internship in 2002 and came back to live with me not long after. Lasting so long in the Keys earned us both “Fresh-Water Conch” status; outsiders who had lived in the island chain for more than 10 years. A true “Conch”(pronounced konk) refers only to people who were born there. The Keys are known as The Conch Republic since the mollusk of that name was so prolific in the old days and was a staple food of the locals for many generations. Unfortunately, they became so popular that the local supply was eventually fished out and conch became endangered and illegal to harvest sometime around 1980. Most conch on the menu in Keys restaurants are now imported from other countries in the Caribbean (mainly the Turks and Caicos). Celia and I are both marine science and environmental management majors (virtually assuring us of never being wealthy) who had worked our way up through the years in stable government agency jobs we both loved. We were making decent money in our field which allowed us a comfortable and fun life in the beautiful but expensive Florida Keys. We had gotten married and were 5 years into owning a cute little home on a boating canal about 20 miles up from Key West in Cudjoe Key. We were/are blessed with the most amazing community and the best friends in the world. I worked part-time as a bartender at a popular waterfront bar making extra money for fun and savings. Everything was great! And then Eileen came into our lives. She was irresistible. She was too pretty and too good of a boat to pass up and she made us want to turn “someday” into “NOW”.
We agreed to purchase Eileen in 2013, and by 2014 we had followed the mid-life-crisis/cruising-bug cliché story to a tee. Chapter three dutifully instructed us to sell the house and most of our worldly possessions; and so we did. Then we moved the remainder of our belongings aboard Eileen and into a relatively storm-proof floating concrete slip at a beautiful brand new marina development just north of Key West. We had effectively down-sized our life into a 34’ by 10’ hallway (and a cargo trailer, and oh yeah…half a storage unit). We would just finish outfitting the boat for long-term cruising, quit our jobs, and sail off to the Caribbean in a year or so. Such a simple and elegant plan…and so naive! I was working a demanding job while I kept bartending on the side, working and saving and trying to cross tasks off the 4-page list Celia had created to keep us focused (Celia is an expert list maker; so much so in fact that they never seem to go away!). Celia was also still working full time and now had an hour long commute to Marathon every day. Three years went by…we still had a long list and were decidedly NOT sailing the Caribbean. We were going to have to kick this adventure into high gear and get (some of) the boat projects finished and GO.