Like most sailors afflicted by an obsession with boats, I hold in my mind an image of the ideal vessel and a sustaining fantasy of future passages to dreamed-of destinations. This enchanted, secretly held vision compensates for the ordinary travails of boat ownership, and provides the reason why I'll never choose to sail around the world if I can help it. Longing is full of endless distances, wrote poet Robert Hass, so why would I wake from my dream of sailing around the world by actually doing it? At the end of the day, as I steer toward the harbor, I feel the presence of deeper waters, and know I could turn the wheel toward the horizon and open sea. But I don't. Clearly, not sailing around the world takes discipline and a great deal of courage.

For coastal cruisers with restless hearts, a cruise from Annapolis to St. Michaels, Maryland, is more than it appears to be. It's a rehearsal for a journey that begins in a known port and ends in imagination. It's fun to dream, and we all know that the more we directly pursue happiness, the more it often eludes us. So, during one of my "just-looking" sessions of furtive internet surfing, when a 39-foot Shearwater cutter for sale in England caught my eye, it disturbed my contentment. She was closer than my boat to the archetypal image I'd dreamed of, and I lay awake at night thinking about her. I began unfaithfully inventing problems that didn't really exist with my 36-foot pilothouse sloop.

On a whim, I decided to commission a survey on the Shearwater that lay in Plymouth, England. It described the vessel exactly as I'd feared, and hoped — a bit neglected and in need of a little love and care, but solid and seaworthy. The gelcoat had lost its shine, the electronics were obsolete, and the engine, as I was to discover, was a vortex of evil. But this lovely boat had great bones. Wait, I'd have to cross an ocean to bring her home. But wasn't that what she was built to do? So I negotiated with the English broker and required a personal inspection. At least, I rationalized, it was a good excuse to take a trip to England. Of course, I bought the boat.

The Voyage Home

When we left Plymouth, just across from the dock from where, in 1620, the Mayflower had departed for the Americas, the forecasters called for clear skies and moderate breezes. What we sailed into, leaving Lands End, was the wash and spin cycle of confused seas created by an unpredicted low coming out of the southeast. Though I had plenty of coastal cruises under my belt, it had been 30 years since I'd made a double-handed trans-Atlantic passage.

My consolation on this day of seasick misery was that even Rob, my friend and crewmate, who claims never to suffer, was at least queasy. But the boat handled beautifully. Once I got my sea legs, days and nights followed of mostly fair or light winds that carried us south and east, with France and Spain out of sight to port as we sought the June southeasterlies above Madeira. The pleasant days made for lots of reading, fishing, and experimenting with the spinnaker.

One fine night, mid-Atlantic, on a broad reach in the middle of my watch, with Chopin in my earbuds, a million stars overhead, dolphins off the bow, and a phosphorescent trail of green in my wake, it happened: I became completely present in the moment and stood, open-hearted, on the bowsprit as we rose and fell with each swell, feeling connected to eternity. It was a kick-ass night watch. I'll never forget the way the dolphins lit up underwater in the phosphorescence, turning instantly black when they playfully breached the surface, except for golden moonlight on their slick backs.

The last night of the passage we spent becalmed when the fuel pump developed an aneurism on an outgoing tide at the mouth of the Chesapeake. About the time I would've called for a tow, given that we were drifting amidst the night shipping, Rob pulled off a MacGyver, fashioning a diaphragm from some material out of the dinghy repair kit, and fixed the pump. The diesel, spewing out a cloud of demonic spirits, belched to life and pushed us up the final miles of the Bay.

An Inglorious Ending

The afternoon of the next day, family waited on the jetty of our home marina to wave us in. As we came down the fairway trailing clouds of glory after thousands of miles of mishap-free sailing, we abruptly ran aground in the narrow channel 100 feet from our slip. It was an extreme low tide and the channel hadn't yet been fully dredged. "Did you buy a boat so deep that we can't get into our slip?" my brother called out to the amusement of everyone lining the shore. We backed off the hump of mud, anchored in the cove, and dinghied in to have dinner. Later, when the tide was higher and with the long passage over, Bagheera of St. Leonard lay calmly in her slip.

The Ideal And The Real

The problem with owning a new-to-you boat is that she really owns you, as the first intrusions of reality dissolve the aura of enchantment surrounding her sweet sheerline and champagne-glass stern. It was refit time, as my new boat's faults had been revealed. All boaters know that when undertaking a refit, there is the constant pull between two opposing forces: You wish to keep everything as simple as possible, but you can't. You start out vowing to eschew too much complexity but end up installing complicated systems that require you to contort yourself into unnatural positions to install and maintain them. After I install a washdown pump in the anchor locker, I'm drawing a line in the sand. Well, wait a minute, we do have in mind a cruise to the Bahamas, so perhaps a watermaker.

The Balance

Time passes. Omi, my wife, lets go our mooring in Annapolis in the fading light for a night sail to St. Michaels. I swing the bow toward the southeast and set the sails. After a while Omi goes below to rest, and I'm alone in the cockpit for the reach down the Miles River. The breeze holds all the way. The stars are out. The murmur of water by the parting bow is soothing. I'm content. I still have no desire to sail around the world, though the old ache for that will return. Right now, the entire world is sailing around me.

We arrive and anchor quietly outside the harbor in 15 feet. In the morning we hear the tap, tap, tap of two white swans cleaning the waterline with their bills. The sun is well above the horizon by the time we rise. We go on deck and look over the harbor. The skipjacks are there, tied along the marine museum wall. The Hooper Straight Lighthouse looks crisp in new white paint and copper roof. The bell in the old church spire, rising through the trees, is ringing. The cruisers anchored in the cove drink coffee under their blue and green canvas awnings. We wave. They wave back. This, I realize, is the life I'd been dreaming of, right here with Omi, with this boat, in this place.