An Adventure

Sometime last Fall after purchasing some property in Belize, Dave, my friend of ten years, went out looking for his boat because he needed something to park at the dock. He was able to find a 1988, 33.5 Hunter sailboat reasonably priced in good condition with some small deferred maintenance. One evening I was talking to Dave about his plans to sail the boat down to Belize and how long that might take and when he was planning on doing it. He told me at that point he thought 5-6 weeks of sailing in the Fall of 2011. Not much was said about it for the following week, and wondering how I could possibly take some time off from work, pay my bills, and afford to do this. I thought about trying to do part of the trip, which would leave Dave doing the remainder of the trip solo. So I sat down and dropped Dave an email saying I would be really interested in going on part of the trip but not sure how I could swing tthe whole trip.  Unbeknownst to me, Dave and his wife Noelle had been discussing that week ways that I could assist Dave on this trip. After a couple of emails, we were able to come up with a plan that would allow me to be Dave's deckhand for the entire trip with a couple of stipulations, "You would need a passport, raingear, and swimsuit. And you need to spend a few days in Belize having fun." Dave and I have made a couple of 10-day trips on the motorcycles to Yellowstone over the past couple of years. We did not call them vacations. We called them adventures, for good reasons. One of the other things Dave said in his email to me was, "Like all adventures some days will be great and some days will be very hard. And in the end, tales to tell the nurses in the old folks home." We both expect this to be very true as we plan our way from Lake Pepin to Belize.