Todd and Emily's Sailing Trip
Reasons Why...

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When we talk about this trip with people, most ask "why are you doing this?"  Well, let me try to explain.
 
Todd and his family say that he started his love for boats and being on the water when he was about in fifth grade.  He had gone to Florida to visit relatives and after seeing the boats and dreaming about having one of his own, he came back and started planning it.  He started getting boating catalogs and magazines then, and it hasn't stopped since.  A few years later, he built his own boat for a school project, a sort of rowboat with an engine.  This year, as we were moving from one apartment to the next, I found a poster he had made to go along with his project.  He had written that for the time being, he had researched boat building and made his own starter boat, but that one day, his dream was to buy his own boat.  Well, he actually followed through with that dream.  He bought an older and smaller sailboat first, and then the 28 foot Triton that we have today.  I am so happy that he is getting to fulfill this lifelong dream, and that I can do it with him.
 
My love of sailing doesn't go back quite as far, but I am no less excited for this trip.  Growing up, my uncle had a sailboat on Lake Champlain, VT, and we used to go out on summer weekends.  Then, after a semester in Spain during my college years, a few of us who had been abroad together reunited to go sailing on one of our friends' sailboats.  We spent the weekend on Toms River, NJ.  The feeling of sleeping on the deck under the open sky and waking up for a swim, and the idea of channeling the wind to direct us where we wanted to go was amazing to me.  Since then, I loved the idea of sailing.  Then I met Todd and he told me about this trip.  Of course I wanted to go, was there any other choice?
 
We both love traveling, and that is what this trip is mostly about.  We want to be able to see new parts of the world, and doing so via the ocean is our idea of the most enjoyable way to do it.  We hope to find other cultures and understand how people live there and what makes them happy, what they do with their time.  Not everyone lives in the same way as we do in America and we want to really experience the positives and negatives, both of our own culture and of the new ones we encounter. When we talk about this trip, so many people can't believe that we would consider leaving a job to do something like this.  But we see it as something we need to do.  I've found that while traveling, I can learn more about myself, my country, values, etc. than when I am doing anything else.  We are ready to get on our way! 

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My seventh grade school project

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The first launch, after many years of waiting...

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It works!