June: The Wake
One rainy day the time had come to leave. Countless times I had imagined this very moment and still, it was very different. We were all alone, just as we had wanted it to be. No big fare-well party waving ashore, no local newspaper present, no announcements like “a heroic family conquering the seven seas”, which is immediately being misunderstood as a circumnavigation around t he world by most, anyway. The past hectic days with thousands of small things still to be undertaken, combined with hearty and warm good-bye visits by family and friends onboard, now lay in our wakes, even before the last mooring line had been taken onboard.

Further to the decision as such to go sailing, the fact to leave family and friends behind must be the most difficult part in such an adventure. It was especially difficult to say good-bye to Karolina’s parents, with whom we have lived and worked with so closely for the past 13 years. All my stressing that this was nothing else but a prolonged sailing holiday did still not sound convincing. The world has for sure become smaller and visiting each other is far more easy these days with low-fare airlines, not to mention telephone and e-mails. It was, however, still different this time: With our house and company sold, we were not forced to return after our ordinary 4 weeks of holiday sailing.

And we probably won’t.
Jonathan welcoming his class mates to come onboard to see his new home
Jonathan's class onboard for a fare-well visit
Jonathan explaining the nav-station to his friends
Jessica's class mates onboard to see how she lives and to better understand the e-mails she is to send in the future
Jessica's friends in the aft cabin, all expressing a wish to sleep overnight, so we had to make up a queue!
Friends came onboard to wish us good luck and to say good-bye, ranging from Jessica’s and Jonathan’s class mates to friends we even didn’t know we had – or better: we could have had since long, had we just taken up the closer contact with them before! Parents to a class mate to Jonathan turned into our friends as late as two days before our departure! Why had we, anyway, not understood before how nice these people were? Was it really necessary to go sailing to get to know new interesting and wonderful people?

Family, good old friends and newly made friends, all were now left in our wakes. Had we hence thrown them all over board? It almost felt like it at this very moment of departure! How many more times would we have to live with this feeling of parting from newly made friends along the way? Is this feeling of emptiness and sadness really worth the price for making new friends?

Of course, it is!

Our new friends I just mentioned above just e-mailed the following quote by Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, one of my favorite books and maybe an inspiration of our own son's name: "Don't be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends."

I feel rich thanks to all our friends and family we have. Isn’t the pain resulting from the fare-well the price for good friend-ship, proving that we care for each other? For sure, nice words, aren't they? But, at this very moment, they only help marginally to overcome our current sadness by looking back into our wakes.

Can we ever avoid those feelings? If you disregard from parting through death, I think, yes, you actually can avoid farewells! First of all by not having any friends you care much about and secondly by not leaving in first place. The first alternative is not very tempting, which leaves us with the possibility of staying at the same place (in the hope that the friends in question don’t leave, instead…). Many do stay in their home towns, avoiding any major changes and a lot of people are totally happy with that.

Sometimes, I wish I had a little bit more of this ingredient.

At the same time, there is something deep inside me whispering the sweet words of a wanderer, encouraging me to explore the world and make new experiences. And - make new friends.

I am a wanderer now. The dark night has fallen over Kattegatt. Everybody else is sleeping onboard, while I’m sitting on my night watch. Regina is rocking steadily while she is doing mile after mile north along the Danish east coast. Destination unknown. “I’ll sleep on that decision”, said Karolina an hour ago when she turned in, leaving me with the boat in the night. Maybe we should sail to Aalborg in Northern Denmark to see Karolina’s uncle who lives there? Or Skagen, maybe, on the very tip of Denmark, where we know that some good friends are moored with their sailing boat on their way out into the world? Or maybe we should go and sail to my mother, who is currently staying in Lysekil on the Swedish westcoast? Better, possibly, to sail directly to Norway from here, taking advantage of the fair winds?

I suddenly notice that while we leave family and friends back home in our wakes, we have just as many parts of our family and friends ahead of us! We should better also look forward, instead of just looking astern, starring at our wakes!

And what kind wakes have we made ourselves ashore, anyhow? Anything that we will be remembered as back home? The wakes fade out quite quickly, don't they. Like what we have reached in our jobs. How long will be remembered there? And, as what? The most obvious wakes we have made we carry onboard: Our children. How lucky we are to have them with us! Had we stayed ashore for another few years, they would first become reluctant to leave their teen-age life for a cruise with their parents and thereafter we had been forced to do this adventure without Jessica and Jonathan – if we at all still were healthy enough at that time....

My wakes are not worth dying for. At least not yet. I’m not done with my results in life and need to sail many human miles more until I can look back with confidence proclaiming: My life has been an exciting one, where I have been taking every chance to do the best out of it. I want to die with a feeling of satisfaction over my life with a minimum of regrets not having tried yet a further step ahead.

Other things we leave in our wakes we can do well without. Here, I don’t just mean the sudden relief from water- and electrical bills, interest rates to be paid, TV-license, gas for the car, or taxes. What we also leave is diversification. The feeling of never being enough, never having the time to do something to its end or give it the attention it deserves, be it in our profession, in the household, the children or with our friends. The last hectic weeks have made it more than clear, namely that we never are able to finish one task before the next one asks for attention, all under the pressure of time. For sure, this extreme stress of preparing our departure went far beyond our normal lives, but it still showed what “burns-out” so many, lacking satisfaction and control.

Of course, I cannot one hundred percent control my current situation in the dark of the black Kattegatt, either. I can’t control the weather and I can’t control the heavy traffic, which concerns me a bit right now. But I can control my own life within the situation. I can alter the course to avoid collision and I can choose my next port of call and the departure from the same depending on the weather situation.

It has become a bit chilly by now, I admit, during the first hours of the 15 June 2005, which is our third day on our adventure with no firm itinerary or time table. Summer sure comes late, if at all, on these latitudes. We’re heading north, not south, yet. Is it crazy to first head north into the North Sea instead of taking the shorter route via Germany, Holland, Belgium and cozy France?

Time will tell, just as time will reveal if the adventures ahead of us are worth all the effort and leaving family and friends in our wakes.

It’s time to look ahead!

Our first stop on 15 June: Nibe in the Limfjord on our way through Denmark