FAQarama

Herein lies a collection of frequent questions we get from people and some answers.

Who are you people?

Chet a.k.a. Captain Daddy. Rednecked sailor by day, ubergeek by night. He has a Masters in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin and a BS in Computer Science from Texas State University and like a bajillion years of tech experience. He will fix your computer, but the price is a six pack of beer and a rousing game of D&D.

Chet a.k.a. Captain Daddy. Rednecked sailor by day, ubergeek by night. He has a Masters in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin and a BS in Computer Science from Texas State University and like a bajillion years of tech experience. He will fix your computer, but the price is a six pack of beer and a rousing game of D&D.

Katy a.k.a. Captain Crunch. Chiropractor, previous small business owner, science fiction author, amateur naturalist, food/cooking enthusiast. I have undergrad degrees in Biochemistry and Mathematics from Texas A&M at College Station and a Doctor of Chiropractic degree.

Katy a.k.a. Captain Crunch. Chiropractor, previous small business owner, science fiction author, amateur naturalist, food/cooking enthusiast. She has undergrad degrees in Biochemistry and Mathematics from Texas A&M at College Station and a Doctor of Chiropractic degree.

Duncan a.k.a. Wrath a.k.a. Dink. Currently age 8. Gamer. Autism Spectrum.

Duncan a.k.a. Wrath a.k.a. Dink. Currently age 8. Gamer. Autism Spectrum.

Peter a.k.a. Ruin a.k.a. Sneaky Pete. Currently age 5. Into everything and thinks he’s a ninja.

Peter a.k.a. Ruin a.k.a. Sneaky Pete. Currently age 5. Into everything and thinks he’s a ninja.

Curious George is their spirit animal.

Curious George is their spirit animal.

What are you doing?

We are going on an adventure through space and time. On a sailboat. Very slowly. We used to live in the suburbs and have great white collar jobs, but that really wasn’t working out for us for a variety of reasons. So we sold the house and the cars and got rid of all our stuff, bought a sailboat, moved onto the sailboat, fixed up the sailboat to decrease the “death trap” ambience, and then went exploring.

Wrath & Ruin on LEGION, our 1984 43-foot Beneteau Idylle

Wrath & Ruin on LEGION, our 1984 43-foot Beneteau Idylle

When did all this happen?

We came up with the idea a few years ago and let it marinate in our brainpans. At first, it was a just another of my wild ideas. Then I started doing some research and crunching the numbers and decided maybe it wasn’t so crazy after all. We could do it. The more we talked about it and read about it, the more reasonable the plan sounded.
When I was a kid, I went sailing with my Granddad on a little sailboat in California for several summers, until he had his third or fourth heart attack and then my Grandmom wouldn’t let us go out by ourselves any more. Chet had never been sailing, but he loved the whole idea of it. We needed practical experience.

Katy, her dad, and our old gal Bilge Pump Betty

Katy, her dad, and our old gal Bilge Pump Betty

My Dad gave us a 22-foot Catalina that we fixed up a bit, and sailed around Lake Travis on the weekends, even doing a few overnight boat-camping trips up the river to watch the stars. Then we took some of the ASA sailing classes down in Corpus Christi to learn how to sail the bigger boats and not, you know, die horribly. Finally, I put my business up for sale and after about a year, the deal was done and we had the money to spend a few years sailing full time. Then we went boat shopping. I drove all over Texas looking at boats, but nothing was exactly what we wanted (a reasonably priced comfortable family boat with blue water potential). So I went to Florida and that’s where I found our girl, Legion. Buying a boat is a whole big deal, but eventually we got it done. Then we sailed back to Texas and waited for the house to sell so Chet could quit his job. That happened. Now we’re doing this.

What’s the Plan, then?

The Plan is somewhat general at this point. We want to spend two to three years sailing in the Caribbean. We’ll probably spend most of our time in the Antilles Islands. I want to visit the Bahamas, the Spanish Virgin islands off Puerto Rico, St Barts, Statia, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominica, St Kitts, St Lucia, and maybe someplace else. I have a spreadsheet. For hurricane season we may stay in the Antilles in Grenada or else we may go over to the ABC (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao) Islands off the coast of Venezuela, or we might sail over to Belize and Costa Rica or maybe down the coast of South America to French Guiana. It depends on the weather, the boat, the kids, how comfortable we are with longer sails, etc.

Of course, it is possible they will get a little too comfortable on the boat.

Of course, it is possible they will get a little too comfortable on the boat.

After that, we hope to cross the Atlantic and spend a few years in Europe, if we and the boat and the weather are ready for it. The best time is to go in May or June and the crossing takes 3 or 4 weeks or thereabouts. We’d like sail the boat around and visit several islands in the Mediterranean and then park the boat in Croatia or Ireland and avail ourselves of all those trains for inland exploring. I know we want to hike in the Alps and see parts of Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Ireland, and the UK.
After that, we will probably pick someplace to settle down so the kids can do high school. I’d like to do a circumnavigation so we can check out the South Pacific Islands, but I can wait until the kids are older.
That’s the ideal plan. We’ll see what actually happens.

But I could never do that, therefore it is completely impossible that anyone could do that, therefore you are crazy and stupid and a liar.

(People seriously say stuff like that to us. To our faces.)

Whatever, man. We’re doing it. If that makes you feel insecure or compulsively rude, go somewhere else. I recommend lolcatz.

How can you afford to stop working at 36ish?

We both had well-paying jobs (chiropractor and software engineer). We saved our money and paid off all our debt. If you work for ten years and you only spend 1/3 of what you make, you can spend 5 or 6 years goofing off because you are used to living poor and you have a chunk of money saved up. It’s not rocket science. Also, seriously, the stock market is not that hard to figure out. And, no, we are not trust-fund babies.

Why don’t you give me some of your money or buy my useless crap?

No.

Why did you chuck your urban white collar life to go sailing?

Oh, lots of reasons:

1. Public school wasn’t working for us.
Duncan has been variously diagnosed with Autism Spectrum, Asperger’s, ADHD, blahblahblah. Basically, certain experiences like scratchy clothing, loud noises and crowded places set him off. When he gets over-amped, he screams, cries, hurts himself, lashes out, throws up, becomes an escape artist and/or curls up in a ball. A crowded classroom is his version of hell. The school district felt that an adequate educational experience was to shove him in a padded room all day and send him home to scream and cry for hours because a kid like that is a target for every bully in the world. And of course, the school doesn’t care. They’d let gangs of bigger older kids hit him, pinch him, hit him, call him names all day until he lost it and beat the crap out of the lot of them. Then they’d punish Duncan. We withdrew him before the end of second grade.

Duncan pulling a King Kong on the architecture exhibit at the NOLA children's museum.

Duncan pulling a King Kong on the architecture exhibit at the NOLA children’s museum.

And Peter is something else completely. We don’t know what exactly. I just know that he’s five, already a year ahead in his curriculum and when he gets mad at me he hides my credit cards, reprograms the default language on my phone to Philipino and removes the bookmarks from my books. I suspect the word ‘diabolical’ would best describe him.

He’s really cute too. They both are. I got lectures from several of their teachers that the little girls were fighting over who got to hold their hands at recess. My boys were causing problems with their indiscriminate hand-holding and I should put a stop to it. Seriously? I am not going to tell my kindergartener that holding hands with his friends is wrong. We had bigger issues to deal with.
Between the two of them, they got kicked out of four preschools and went through seven nannies in four years. The urban child care system was solidly not prepared for my boys. And were we shunned by all the other parents in the neighborhood? Yes, we were. The boys were surrounded by other kids and lonely all the time. Who needs that? Not us.

2. The suburban white collar life? Sucks.
It’s true. You bust your butt to get the good grades, get into college, take the hard classes, graduate with a useful degree or two or three, spend years never taking vacation, juggling kids and work, showing up on time, properly dressed, smile and apologize and fix a bunch of crap that wasn’t your fault every day. You get some money together, pay off your debt, and then get to spend your weekends fixing crap on your plastic house and picking up the bar tab for all your broke liberal arts degree friends after listening to them pompously yammer on about how people like you are what’s wrong with America. Whooohoo. Who doesn’t want a lifetime of that followed by a ‘retirement’ spent tanked out on high grade pharmaceuticals until you die? Me. That’s who.

3. Lots of very smart people expect American civilization to collapse in the next two decades.
So, you know, what’s the point of waiting for retirement? It ain’t happening. Even if society doesn’t collapse, our savings will disappear one way or another. Scams, government, inflation, disaster. Something will happen. It always does. The only constant in this world is change. The world of the future will look radically different than it does today, one way or another. Might as well enjoy what the money we worked hard to earn can buy us now and find someplace new to live while we focus on teaching the kids useful skills for surviving in our ever-changing world. Like sailing, computer programming, fishing, boat mechanics, cooking, how to use a composting toilet, how to get dinner when you are lost and don’t speak the language or have any local currency. Useful stuff.
(Note: If you feel compelled to write me email to tell me that the world is going to exist forever in some bizarre male-dominated white American hyper-consumer Shangri-la and that clearly I am psychotic because I believe that since the world has radically changed in the last thousand years, there’s probably a good chance it will continue to do so, please save yourself the trouble. I’ll only delete it.)

But why sailing? Why not backpacking or an RV or a beach cabana in Mexico?

For starters, the view is nice.