By: Jamie Chase

Today is the day: Sunday, May 3rd, is the date that we have been figuratively counting down to for the past 5 years, and that I have literally been counting down to since December.  On our fridge calendar, I wrote a small number in the corner of each day from January 1, 2020, counting down until today: “Day Zero”.  As I write this, I am supposed to be on an airplane, winging my way back to Solomon’s Marina in Maryland to reunite with Merdeka.  My three crew members will have all arrived by Wednesday, May 6th, and depending on the weather, we will have cut the dock lines by May the 9th, sailing for England via the Azores Islands.

Except, like most of the world, our plans have hit a hiccup… or more correctly, a virus.  Most of the worlds’ borders remain closed, including the Canada/U.S.A. border, so my crew and I are not going anywhere.  I have known for a month now, that Leg 1 of the Chase Family’s year-long adventure was going to have to be postponed or cancelled, so I’ve had some time to come to grips with it.

In the big-picture, I am thankful to have a healthy family, and to be living in a safe country, and to still have employment.  The bills are being paid, and we are carrying on.  Our plans are not dead, merely being altered…though planning out the future steps remains a challenge as the world changes daily.  We are REALLY hoping to be able to set off in July on an altered schedule, but there is also the possibility that we will be postponing everything for a further year.

A strange thing has happened to me over the last two weeks.  My brain knows that the first part of the trip is “off” yet, I keep getting waves of excitement, and even adrenaline, come over me in preparation for today’s departure.  I KNOW I’m not going, but I haven’t been able to stop myself from checking the offshore weather every day (which, of course, is absolutely ideal right now), from running through mental lists of scenarios, emergency plans, parts lists and provisioning (food) choices.  Despite being cognizant of the fact that the only thing I’m sailing right now is a keyboard, something deep within me is beginning this adventure already.  In reality, this adventure really did begin the day we signed the paperwork to purchase Merdeka in December of 2018: however, an interesting mental change has come over me regarding our boat, too.  

As soon as we took possession of Merdeka, the list of items to be overhauled and upgraded onboard grew by leaps and bounds.  Every trip from Kamloops to Annapolis, and then later to Spring Cove Marina in Solomons, Maryland, saw multiple pieces of equipment being repaired by me, and new lists created each time of additional items to be upgraded.  Getting a 50-foot long sailboat ready to safely transport me and my family across the Atlantic Ocean, and to be our home for a year, is no small project.  

Happy to be back with the boat working on the to-do list...just.one.more.time!

On March 5th of this year, I headed back out to Merdeka on what I knew would be my final boat work trip before this May’s departure.  A few sleepless nights preceded that trip, as I lay awake trying to prioritize a still lengthy list of tasks, but this time with the added pressure of knowing the tasks that didn’t get done, wouldn’t be getting done.  Every time I’ve returned home to Kamloops from one of these boat work trips, I’ve carried a sense of accomplishment at jobs completed, coupled with an immediate mental list of what needed to be tackled next time I went out.  Planning ahead to the next trip, and the next tasks, and that next list, has been my constant mental state for the past year and a half.

That orange flapping thing is our new Hydrovane!

This last trip was an interesting one, to say the least.  I arrived and buckled down, and while I worked, I often listened to CBC Kamloops over the internet.  The news from home was not good.  In early March in Maryland, not much had changed due to Coronavirus.  Sure, the stores were sold out of toilet paper, but other than that, life carried on as usual.  Meanwhile, back in BC, there were daily changes to recommendations and then more regulations put in place around social distancing.  Soon the Prime Minister was on the radio, telling me it was time to come home.  I had a choice to make: return to BC early, but leave Merdeka unprepared to cross the Atlantic, or stay and complete my work, but risk having the border shut down and all flights cancelled, possibly stranding me on the US East Coast.  We had already cancelled Dina’s flight out to Maryland (she was meant to join me during Spring Break to help with final preparations) because of the ever-changing conditions.  So, I stayed and pushed on with my jobs, but as my time in Maryland drew to a close on March 21st, it was looking very likely that not only would I be unable to get back to Merdeka anytime soon-- but that the May crossing to England was very unlikely.

Not to minimize the real plight of actual refugees, but as I cleared through airport security in a nearly abandoned Baltimore International Airport, I felt like I was catching an emergency airlift out of what was soon to be a war zone.  (I feel a special connection to Maryland, and we have made some very good friends there.  In hindsight, I am glad to see they seem to be weathering the Coronavirus storm well, with some good State leadership, but as I was leaving things were not looking good at all.)  Once I had safely arrived home, the answer to what the immediate future held quickly became clear.

I had a fantastic crew arranged to accompany me across the Atlantic.  While Dina and the girls would be finishing up the school year, three fellow sailors would be joining me and Merdeka to help sail across the Atlantic.  Brian McIlquham is a retired Captain from Kamloops Fire Rescue, and an accomplished sailor.  Marco Coda, a Paramedic with BC Ambulance Service in Vancouver, is also a Sail Canada sailing instructor.  Rounding out the “All-Emergency Services” crew was Alfy Vince, a police officer with the RCMP, as well as a long time live-aboard sailor and YouTube Vlogger.  Alfy contacted me to let me know that beyond his control, all leave had been cancelled for RCMP members across Canada, at least until summer.  Marco was immediately thrown into BC’s “Ground-Zero” as a first responder in the Coronavirus pandemic, while both Brian and I were officially sealed in behind a closed Canada/US border.  The trip was officially cancelled.  A mere two days ago, I received a refund on my airfare from Kamloops to Baltimore.  It really sunk in when I reflected on the fact that it had been a one-way ticket; the true beginning of the journey after all these years of dreaming, scheming, scrimping (at home) and spending (on boat materials) had been within a few days of coming true.

Perhaps it is because so many projects were accomplished onboard Merdeka, perhaps it is because I am now unable to go but, the past month has seen me in a new mental state for the first time since we purchased her.  Since I have returned home, I have not thought about the tasks that still must be completed.   The endless list of jobs to-do are not all completed... they never are. There will always be improvements to be made: there will always be new things breaking, seizing, and wearing out, items that could be stowed or mounted better, upgrades that could still be contemplated to make our lives onboard easier.  Despite those outstanding issues, my mind is at peace. Merdeka is ready: she’s been outfitted with essential navigation and safety equipment, the sailing hardware has been installed, the engine overhauled and is purring beautifully.

I picture Merdeka in her slip at Spring Cove right now, waiting patiently, yet also gently tugging at her lines, leaning forward to the horizon like a dog that’s been kept in the house all day, waiting for her family to get home.

Perhaps the greatest impetus for me to do more than just dream about making this trip has been an intimate and personal understanding of a very simple truth: life is beautiful, fragile, and unpredictable.  That’s the very irony about this cancellation that I have been spending a lot of time pondering over the last few weeks.  In my friend John Kretschmer’s latest book, he begins my favourite chapter with a couple of profound quotes taken from others’ writings:

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.  Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested.  But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.  So it is:  we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill supplied but wasteful of it…   Life is long if you know how to use it.” 

 Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

Dwell on the beauty of life.  Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

 -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

To which I will add a quote from that same chapter:

None of us gets out of this life sentence alive, and only by framing life with death can we realize the value of our days.  Deep ocean sailing takes us to the very edge of time, to a natural place where time matters profoundly and where our own borders are not defined by length and beam, but by our imagination and zest for living.  

John Kretschmer, Sailing to the Edge of Time

Not only are our days on earth finite, but we cannot know how many of them there are.  Ever since the premature passing of my Dad, and later, my Mom; along with being an eyewitness to so many other lives cut short, in my duties at work; I have tried to remember to make the most of my days.  This is one reason why we as a family have dreamed of taking this journey and are doing it now.  Who knows what the future holds? 

Therein lies the irony.  This trip that we want to make, partly because of the unpredictability of life, has been put on hold because of the unpredictability of life.

I believe there will be many silver linings to this cloud that the world is passing through right now.  My hope is that perhaps one of the greatest is the number of people around the globe that have suddenly and collectively been brought to new realizations.  I am inspired by the number of people that I see re-evaluating their priorities and hopefully, like me, waking up to the idea that life is a precious gift not to be wasted, but also that we live in an interconnected world where we actually do need one another.

In our efforts to “Carpe Diem” in this time of limited options, we’ve been getting a lot of projects around the house completed, continuing with our preparations to leave.  As another silver lining, I have a little extra time to get even more done at home than I otherwise would have.  Right now, we are still looking forward to a possible July departure on a modified voyage that would still see us living and exploring onboard Merdeka for a year.  Most everything we have planned and worked towards has been geared towards leaving, so that is what we still hope to do.  We have a few more weeks to come to a conclusion, so we will wait and watch the status of international borders.  Plan “C”, which we still feel blessed to have as an option, will be that we postpone everything for one more year, in which case our “2020 Vision” will become a “2021 Vision”.