I wasn’t born with a jib sheet in my hand.

I never thought I would become a sailor. It wasn’t that I didn’t like sailing (since I never had) or the idea of sailing (since I never thought about it). It just never occurred to me. I was raised in a land locked state and the few trips we had to the beach were occupied with the New Jersey Board Walk: buying souvenirs and playing video games.

That began to change at the tender age of 30. I was traveling in South America with my fiancé and my eyes were being opened to the incredible vastness of the world. I can honestly say that it was the most amazing time in my life. We met a couple that was sailing around the world. We were backpacking and taking the crowded, dirty busses everywhere we went. With a 40lb. backpack strapped on, the thought of having it all carried for me in a large floating vessel seemed pretty attractive and we started talking about getting a sailboat.

“If we lived on the boat we could live by the water, afford everything we have now and it would still be cheaper than living in our house.” Brett was telling me.

With my usual degree of forethought (none) I said, “Sure, sounds like fun!” I was thinking of all the extra money I would have to spend on shoes and makeup now that our life was about to get so much less expensive, I was thinking of massages and pedicures and all the little things that I was so close to being able to afford. I was thinking of sailing around the world with a martini glass in my hand, wearing an expensive Italian swimming suit. I was thinking of Miami Vice and I was Don Johnson’s girlfriend.

It was a year after our decision to buy the boat that it became a reality. While our house was rented and our boat was in Mexico we stayed in a hotel in Burbank for the transition. I wanted to call the boat Baby, a tribute to the life we were leaving behind in order to afford this lifestyle. Brett wouldn’t have it. We decided on the name Fearless: since we are either fearless or stupid to make such a huge decision with no sailing experience. Stupid is not a good boat name. Only time will tell if we named her wrongly.

We insisted on going with the boat to and from Mexico for her three month stay there, even though we were too scared to captain her ourselves and we hired someone who was capable of taking her down. We visited her religiously, again too scared to take her out on the water. We just used her as a floating hotel. It was a brutal test, living in that cramped hotel room with no windows that could be opened. It made our move to the boat all the more rewarding. It was a fantasy come true when we brought her back home. With a hired captain, of course.

Two years later and welcome to reality. I am 33 years old now and the blood, sweat and tears that we have put into the boat are never ending, the sunny days spent cleaning the bilge are too many to count and the project list seems only to get longer as the days get shorter until we leave on our trip around the world. The pedicures and massages I dreamed of are no where to be seen and instead of my wardrobe getting fuller it is shrinking in size as I keep purging my closet in a hope to one day wear clothes that are not wrinkled beyond repair by crowding and humidity.

Now we regularly sail to Catalina. We leave at night and sail till 2am to get to our destination and have the precious weekend to enjoy away from land. We get excited about the dolphins under our bow and the full moon casting its light on the crashing waves. We have learned how to anchor and I can back a 45’ sailboat into my slip and make it look like I’m not sweating bullets, though I suspect that no one does this maneuver without a little internal jitters no matter the level of experience. We still need to work on trimming the sails, but we have learned some valuable lessons along the way and it is slowly coming together.

It is still a year and a half until we leave on our circumnavigation. All the things I thought I would gain have slipped by like so many waves in the ocean and I am left with chipped nails and salty skin. I am left with a realization that I don’t need a pedicure: I need a PFD. And as my priorities shift I am slowly becoming a new person, a person who is more interested in the angle of the wind than with how it makes my hair look. The other day when I accidentally told my auto mechanic that it was my starboard rear-view mirror that needed to be fixed I realized something: I may not have been born into sailing but I had been remade by it. And I will never be the same.