Sitting on the Dock of the Bay

We are convinced that there are two kinds of people in the world, those that love boats, and everybody else. That is why some folks feel like Kenneth Grahame said in The Wind in the Willows,  “There’s nothing––absolutely nothing––half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.”

We learned which side of that equation we resided on a long time ago, over thirty years back as a matter of fact. That was when we bought our first vessel, The Busted Flush.

She was a forty foot steel hulled monster that drank fuel like a sailor drinks rum and taught us the true meaning of the phrase Rust Never Sleeps. But we were hooked… line and sinker. From that day on we lived by our own saying “Any day that we spend some time on a boat is a good day.”

For years we kept her on Percy Priest Lake outside of Nashville, Tennessee, until we moved down to the US Virgin Islands.

We briefly considered taking The Flush with us down to the Caribbean, but better judgement prevailed. She never would have survived in the salt water.

So rather than have her spend eternity in Davy Jones’ locker, we bought another, an Albin 27 Family Cruiser, and put her into port at Christiansted on St. Croix.

We took it out weekends to the nearby Buck Island National Park, and on some longer cruises across to St. John and St. Thomas. Once we even took her on a week-long adventure through the British Virgin Islands.

Even though the marina was right below our condo, certainly closer than we were to the boat when we were in Nashville, it wasn’t quite close enough, but with three kids still at home we needed more room than our little Rising Sun could provide for any long term or live aboard possibilities.

But now, after another decade has passed and we live aboard our 38 foot Rawson Trawler Gaviota, and love it. With just the two of us these days it is just about perfect.

However, under the heading of the grass is always greener, we have surmised that this is might not be the ultimate situation.

We have decided that the ideal arraignment would be to have our own private port. So we have been looking into it, even if it is only a dream for now. All we would need is a bit of waterfront property with a house.

Then we could get started building our own dock.

It turns out that it isn’t all that difficult.  After all, we are not talking about one of those wonders of the world that we love to visit, just a nice, private place to keep our boat.

Oh, and to swim, and fish from, and grill, and just all around hang out by the water.  Then, as Otis Redding so eloquently sang, we could be Sittin’ on the dock of the bay, wastin’ time. That sounds pretty darn good to us.

Who knows, we might even rediscover Skinny dipping. Good thing we would have the added bonus of privacy.

David & Veronica, GypsyNester.com