The Women and Cruising Blog

Judy emailed Women and Cruising with the following question as she and her husband contemplated going cruising. We forwarded her email to several women who might have thoughts to share with Judy.  Beth Leonard, Sherry McCampbell, and Kathleen Watt responded to Judy and we printed their responses here in our blog. We have since received three more responses to Judy’s question from readers of Women and Cruising. Read on …..

Question:

My husband and I are thinking of living aboard a sailboat in four to five years from now. His daughter is grown and just purchased her first home while my daughter is a freshmen in high school.

I suppose it is harder for me to take to the idea of living aboard because I have a really great paying job and I feel I need to help my daughter with college. I am only 39 so leaving my career is harder than I thought it would be. Any advice for me? My husband is 47 and more than ready to leave tomorrow. He is self employed and can build or fix anything so he will not have a problem finding work along the way of our adventure.

I look forward to hearing from you if you have time or advice.

– Judy and John

Harriett writes in:

Hi Judy and John,

It’s probably too early to decide – 5 years is a long time and you may feel differently by then. Or your daughter may get a scholarship or change her path.

If you can fit sailing into your current life, that would be a good start to finding out whether you want to even try it.

Also, there’s nothing wrong with a “try it and we’ll see how it goes” attitude.

All these thoughts come from my own experience, since my husband and I left to go cruising at 45 with the idea that we’d do it for 2 years and see if we liked it. Twenty years later, we still consider ourselves cruisers, although we’re ashore right now caring for elderly parents.

…Read more

Question:

My husband and I are thinking of living aboard a sailboat in four to five years from now. His daughter is grown and just purchased her first home while my daughter is a freshmen in high school.

I suppose it is harder for me to take to the idea of living aboard because I have a really great paying job and I feel I need to help my daughter with college. I am only 39 so leaving my career is harder than I thought it would be. Any advice for me? My husband is 47 and more than ready to leave tomorrow. He is self employed and can build or fix anything so he will not have a problem finding work along the way of our adventure.

I look forward to hearing from you if you have time or advice.

– Judy and John

(Women and Cruising sent Judy’s question to several of our friends/contributors for their thoughts. Beth Leonard was the first to respond. Here is the second response we received, from Sherry McCampbell.)

Sherry McCampbell responds:

Hi Judy,

You don’t say what your job is… but I guess it doesn’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things.

To just give you my story… the first time I went cruising, I left at age 37. I gave up a job I really loved (computer programming) and went sailing.

…Read more

Question:

My husband and I are thinking of living aboard a sailboat in four to five years from now. His daughter is grown and just purchased her first home while my daughter is a freshmen in high school.

I suppose it is harder for me to take to the idea of living aboard because I have a really great paying job and I feel I need to help my daughter with college. I am only 39 so leaving my career is harder than I thought it would be. Any advice for me? My husband is 47 and more than ready to leave tomorrow. He is self employed and can build or fix anything so he will not have a problem finding work along the way of our adventure.

I look forward to hearing from you if you have time or advice.

– Judy and John

(Women and Cruising sent Judy’s question to several of our friends/contributors for their thoughts. Here is the first of several responses we received.)

Beth Leonard responds:

I can really relate to what you are saying – when my husband suggested we sail off into the sunset, we were both working as international management consultants, based out of Sweden.

We were in the partnership window, my job paid extremely well and I loved it – except that it took everything I had and left me no time or energy for other things that were important to me.

…Read more