"This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes.....again"
Jim Morrison wrote those lyrics a long time ago.
Today they mark the end of a dream.
So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night....
The deal has closed, with the irrevocability of a casket lid closing, on Lucidity.
Someone else owns her and takes with her ten years of my life.
Requiescat in pace.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ok, so I had to be a little melodramatic. It fits. Yes, Lucidity is sold, the money is in the bank. That particular dream is over, sold, closed with a finality that makes my bones hurt.
(Owned her 8 years, lost $2500 per year on the purchase. Maybe this is a bad time to sell a boat. But how do you price a dream?)
I may have been being melodramatic above, but dammit, I wasn't done sailing. A violent and unexpected storm came into my life and, like an F-5 tornado, wiped the slate clean. I am still licking my wounds. Even now I can't look at the pictures, or for that matter pictures of any sailboat, without pangs. So I'm in avoidance mode. I will get back on my feet and go adventuring again in some fashion, but for now, selling my dream is about as painful an experience as I've ever suffered. Those of you who watched the story develop know the monumental amount of work, time and money I put into this dream. To watch it abruptly melt away like a sand castle on the beach is...absolutely gut-wrenching.
(By the way, that quote about the best two days of a sailor's life being the day he buys his boat and the day he sells it? I'd like to punch whomever said that in the mouth.)
There will never be another Lucidity, another "first" boat. All the firsts still ring in my head...the first time I sailed her as owner, the first time we caught a crabpot in the Keys, (Yo David!), the first storm, the first big waves, the first all night sail on the by-god-mother-ocean-herself, the first glimpse of Bimini, the first encounter with a big ship, the first time running aground. (Yo, Bill and Sue!)
There will never be another Lucidity with all her prior history. Capt Dan especially; what a character. One unrealized wish was to take Capt Dan for a sail on the new and refurbished Lucidity, but he died before we got the chance. Sorry, Capt. He told us enough stories about that boat to fill a book, and as we built our own history with her we discovered even the wildest and most outlandish of those tales were true. The monkeys, the gold treasure, the movie stars, even the one about Jimmy Buffet. There's still a photocopy of the Miami Herald's Dave Barry story on board somewhere.
Our own developing history was just as fantastic. A weekend tied to the dock at the Palleys, an adventure that never landed in the blog to maintain Reese's privacy. Meeting so many other cruisers, breakdowns in Pensacola, traveling the river from Knoxville to the sea, bumping a reef in the Bahamas, Johnny Depp's island, unbelievable moonglow in the Biminis, and of course Joe and Angela on Amarok and the other Captains we met, mentors and heroes all.
I once told someone, back when Lucidity was tied up at CYC in Knoxville after we bought her, that even if I never got to sail her again, I'd already had so many adventures I couldn't complain. Just getting her home was the adventure of a lifetime.
Well, to a certain extent that's true, but it ended too soon. Way, way too soon.
So for now, I'm boatless. Feels like being homeless, and other boat owners will know just what I mean. I have a house now and yet another insanely fast car, but they are diversions, hobbies.
The view out these windows is static.
I still have to re-assemble my life, sort through the wreckage and see what I can salvage. I am resigned to the fact that it will take a few years. In the meantime I'll enjoy the life I'm living here; after all I get to see the mountains every morning, and Reese is a bright and happy part of life. Even so, the beginnings of another plan are stirring in the dark corners of my head.
"Since my house burned down
I now have a better view
Of the rising moon"
-Mizuta MasahideOf the rising moon"
Sometimes I think about this passage from "Cruising Lucidity:"
"There were times, more than I can count, when I stood on the deck of Lucidity with the sun on my face and mother ocean passing beneath and felt like a god. She sailed as if forever, powering through the waves, perfectly balanced on the cosmic knife-edge between air and water, driven by the yin/yang of the great wheel in the sky. More than a few times I realized with a soul-shuddering intensity that I was standing on the wind-catching, sunset-chasing rock-solid manifestation of a dream come true. My dream. Those times were so impossible as to seem unreal but they were some of the most real moments in my life."
Dreams have to gather speed, find pathways, like many small streams merging into a river or the gathering of charged ions just before a lightning strike. I can feel the tingle.
The violent storm that ripped through my life has been an unexpected and dramatic learning experience. I've learned to really live the idea that you have to be happy with what you have, not spend your life yearning for what you think you want. It's given me an appreciation and an acceptance I didn't know before. There is a fortune out there, a fortune in adventure and new experiences, but a guy also has to remember there's a fortune right at his door.
That being said, I ain't done yet.
Butch
Maryville TN
2012
If you think I'll sit around as the world goes by
You're thinkin' like a fool cause it's a case of do or die
Out there is a fortune waitin' to be had
You think I'll let it go you're mad
You've got another thing comin'.........."
