I have seen the wistful look in the eyes of overlanders staring out to sea from a sandy campsite. It’s hopeless but I try to dissuade them from the idea that sailing might be a better lifestyle. Sailing has all the romance of piracy; vanning is just commuting extended.
My wife got on board with my idea to sail to Key West, seen here near the entrance to the Panama Canal a few weeks before the end of the US administration.
Van Life twenty years ago was not what it is today with modern technology offering, for good or ill, connectivity and many of the comforts of home. You can now cram a home into a van and still live a suburban life on the road. Twenty years ago a boat offered the independence travelers ashore only dreamed of enjoying. We took full advantage on a 34 foot catamaran which gave us and our two dogs four times the living space of our 2020 Promaster van. The Internet was found in cafes and we sent emails occasionally. GPS navigated uncertainly on expensive charts downloaded to a laptop with all the inaccuracies of two hundred years of sun sight navigation to back up their pinpoint accuracy…We had a solar panel and a desalinator onboard and we watched where we went.
Faced with a retirement plan we naturally thought of a boat first. But we rapidly realized Rusty hates the water and the thought of dealing with taking him ashore twice a day held very little appeal. Beyond those family considerations a boat would have offered us limited destinations which sounds like a paradox when water covers the vast majority of the Earth’s surface. You get to sail the edges of land if exploration is your choice and anything beyond Central America or the Caribbean Basin requires some serious pelagic sailing. I don’t see Rusty becoming an oceanic dog.
I am not much given to over estimating my abilities and I knew that taking my wife and dog by boat on offbeat routes would increase my stress levels proportionately reducing my enjoyment. I am not Webb Chiles and lack his ability to face a watery grave with equanimity. Worse, I lack the desire to drown Layne by over estimating my desire to explore by water. On land I am ready to push my family to the limit. I myself am perhaps a paradox. Many people think driving Mexico is foolhardy and perilous. Perhaps sailing an ocean where people don’t reside would be safer.
I fully accept that driving a van requires less skill and is obviously less romantic than being a 21st century sailor on the high seas. However I love driving and at the rather ripe old age of 64 I have come to accept that I am more explorer and less sailor. I enjoy the ability to drive into a town, an archeological site, a park, a forest or a sandy beach and there park my home. My van takes me to the very doorstep of civilizations new to me.
As a tool for exploration a boat is magnificent in the right hands (not mine) but for me leaving the boat on the coast to rent a car for an inland drive was always a source of expense and trepidation. I hated leaving my boat unattended. We did it several times with no harm but it was just one more concern for a worry wart like me. And I loved the driving! I remember the drives with fondness. I should pay attention to my feelings.
There is the matter of being at sea. I never felt at one with the business of sailing. Webb loves the isolation and the freedom of sailing an ocean. I don’t. I discovered, and it was a good thing to discover, that I liked arriving. I enjoyed the process of discovery, going ashore and finding my way in a new town behind the harbor. I liked arriving and finding a superb anchorage which is no way to sail.
When I was a youngster I lived in the Santa Cruz harbor and it was my world. I had friends and a hobby, and vacations involved nothing more than untying my little boat and taking off to explore the California coast. California is easy as winds and wind direction are predictable and the chance of running aground is nil on such a deep sharply defined coast. I got cold in the summer fog and I struggled to pilot the dark coastline as I poked here and there looking for a breakwater. It was fun but it wasn’t traveling.
In the Caribbean and the US east coast I had to study weather patterns and look for windows and when we put to sea I lived with a knot inside that only slowly unraveled as the weather held and we completed our passage. The times I got it wrong we got beaten up and I never got used to the sensation of total loss of control in howling winds and huge seas. I don’t have those worries in my van.
I’d rather be in here wishing I were out there, than out there wishing I were in here is a sailor’s ditty I used to think of every time I planned a departure from a safe harbor. I enjoy sailing and I think I am reasonably proficient at it. I had the nerve to sail with Webb once and he pronounced me fit for purpose which was quite the ego boost. But living the nomad life in a van suits me best and I’m not bad at parallel parking either.
I think sometimes I disappoint people when I say quite firmly I prefer the 21 foot van to the 34 foot catamaran but it’s the truth. I am already looking forward to driving the coast to Seattle even as I enjoy hanging out in Santa Cruz. The passage I am finding is the thing in my GANNET2. The harbors in my van life are secondary and that must mean I am doing something right, for me at least.
Vive La Difference as Webb the sailor emphasizes. So I am a van lifer first and a hobby sailor second. I hope that doesn’t disappoint.
