Hitchhiking Across the Atlantic

It was late May, 1988. I was on board Cougar, a 44 foot sailboat. Seventeen days before, Conover, my skipper, and I had set sail from Bermuda for the Azores, a small group of Islands off the coast of Portugal, 1,700 miles east. We were nearing our destination and as I took my turn at watch this night, I could see the lights of the island of Faial beckoning to me in the darkness. Much as these lights were summoning me onward, so was the life of adventure I had, with great trepidation, chosen to pursue. I had joined the ranks of sailors who hitchhiked the oceans of the world by crewing on different boats. Mostly, these sailors were strong, young men and the fact that I was a fifty-eight year old grandmother made me a bit of an oddity. I had come to believe that God had given me this gift of time at sea to teach me to let go, to trust His plan for me; that, no matter how hard I tried or what sacrifices I would make, there were things I could not control. That sometimes God closes doors because it’s time to move forward and he knows you won’t move unless your circumstances force you. That it was okay to try something challenging and, perhaps, fail. My journey might have been all on one boat and with people I knew and trusted but, instead, I have had several skippers who treated me in such a way that I had finally learned how and when “to get off the boat”, to overcome my fear of what might lie ahead and move on.