#adjustingsails

6/11/2016 Brad writes:

As Kristi and I complete our final preparations for boarding our first ocean gig (do multiple nights of 10 hours of sleep count?), I have a compulsion to introduce ourselves.  Gotta break in a new blog somehow, right?

We’ve been living/working in Denver, Colorado since 2013, Kristi staying busy working up the ladder at a busy downtown restaurant and myself at a rapidly growing environmental consulting company.  Slowly but surely, I was noticing my disengagement with the activities I used to love, and busy city life was weighing on my self-perceived patient, friendly nature.  Anyway, we both recognized that life’s adventure was becoming more and more difficult to achieve, and our shared love of and experiences with the ocean lit a path forward.  And so we set out.

Our first steps were a bit too lengthy, such as when we thought maybe we should just jump straight into the fog with a boat & business purchase with a small business loan.  Who knows exactly how that move would have worked out (I’d like to think we would have made it work through sheer incompetence and grit), but our lack of experience would have at least made the transition more difficult and dangerous than it needed to be.  At least we gained some new insight into our dreams, and some new knowledge about the industry.

So, while working in landlocked Denver we gained some basic experience.  I had stumbled across the Victoria Sailing School a year or so prior, and so we bought into their classroom and practical sessions on nearby lakes to earn our ASA101 and 103 certifications.  Add in some books and the online refresher course for Kristi’s Captains License renewal, and we had enough knowledge to start talking shop with a few boat owners on FindACrew.net.