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Two years into our voyage the Yucatan current catapulted us northward in a great arc toward the east coast of the United States. From the Keys, we snaked our way in and out of the inland waterway toward the Chesapeake Bay. Along the way we used the few anchorages we could find between $100-a-night marinas. The VHS radio was jammed with boaters calling vessel assist. Waterway road rage reminded me of big city rush hour. We followed the buoys mile after mile, now strangers in a strange land.

We wintered in Annapolis, Maryland in order to earn money and make final preparations for an Atlantic crossing in the spring. Our home floated on Back Creek, where a cheap slip and a few gallons of diesel provided what we needed. Our son Joel, attended the local high school, an educational way-station with which to compare his classroom without walls. Monica picked up a physical therapy job and I actually got a decent consulting gig with a DC company.

To save money for the cruising kitty, we lived somewhere near the poverty line that winter. We drove around in an old wreck of a car, pinched pennies like crazy, and huddled through the long winter nights aboard Songline. But our miserly lifestyle never made us feel desperate or demeaned. Like everyone around us, we went about the business of our daily lives, working, going to school, and doing the laundry, but it seemed that our feet didn’t quite touch the ground. Conventional measures of status and respect didn’t apply to us. Our navigational beacon was our voyage. It steadied our course and filled our daily lives with meaning.

Voyaging bestows a special status. Seagoing officialdom regards the crew of a voyaging vessel as sovereign. You are treated with respect and held to a correspondingly high standard of responsibility for vessel and crew. Over the years I became accustomed to this status. Who doesn’t like being regarded with respect? Those who voyage in small boats acquire a kind of diplomatic immunity from the conventional trappings of social status when they drop in on the normal world.

I pressed Pause for the third time.

I remembered what life was like before I went voyaging. I think that my sense of self-worth had a lot to do with the reflections and reactions of others. Without a compass and clear destination, I steered mostly in hope of finding approval from friends, family, and colleagues. I judged myself by outside measures such as being liked, having money, things, and prestige. The act of voyaging rendered those measures irrelevant. Instead, Voyaging forced me to fix my gaze on my compass, charts, and the land, sky and sea. Although I knew that my arrival at the time and place of my choosing was never a foregone conclusion, I was guided by a clear purpose and that purpose was the yardstick by which I now measured my self-worth. All I needed to do was to apply all of my skill and knowledge toward bending the wind to my purposes while recognizing when it was I who needed to do the bending.

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