Sailing

I spent Saturday with my friends Acie and Nathan at the Strictly Sailing conference on Chicago's Navy Pier. We walked through some boats, asked a lot of questions, learned celestial navigation, tips for circumnavigation, and proper provisioning. We also enjoyed lunch at Riva and spent a lot of time talking about travel, adventure, race, and religion.

Someday I will sail around the world with these guys (and our wives). Acie and Nathan are two of the most thoughtful, intelligent, and adventurous guys I know. Making new friends as an adult, and perhaps particularly as a pastor, is very hard. These guys have made it easy, and I am overjoyed to call them friends.

I've generally mapped out how the trip will play itself out (this, by the way, is the 21 year plan...fourteen years from now Isaiah will be in his first semester at Harvard and Julie and I will be empty nesters [God willing, of course]):
Years 1-13: Learning the art of sailing on Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes; saving up; buying boats that allow for the transition from novice small water sailors to experienced ocean adventurers;

Year 14-15: Sail from Chicago through the Great Lakes and Inter-coastal Waterway, down the eastern seaboard (with a long stop in Charleston), to Miami, and then our first passage to Eleuthra and the Bahamas.

Year 16: The Bahamas, Turks & Caicos, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Dominica.

Year 17: Atlantic passage from Virgin Gorda to the Azores, Madeira, and Canary Islands to west Africa (Morocco); through Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean--sticking to the northern countries of Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, and eventually Israel before going through the Suez and into the Red Sea.

Year 18: Djibouti (and hopefully no pirates), to Oman (Muscat), to Pakistan (Karachi), Mumbai, Sri Lanka, Calcutta, Bangladesh (Seung & Amy), and Kuala Lampur (Malaysia).

Year 19: KL through Indonesia to Fiji and French Polynesia.

Year 20: Passage to Lima, Peru, up the western seaboard of South America, through the Panama Canal to Grenada, through the Lesser Antilles.

Year 21: Make our way north and west through the West Indies, DR, Bahamas, and finally Miami.

This frightens me to no end! What a glorious adventure it would be!