Aboriginal Australians have a concept of dreamtime during which creation happens. It seems to make sense: we dream, we create a vision, we focus our actions around that vision. The hard part is keeping on course with your vision.

There's no end of management folderol about the essential importance of having a vision. Since CA and I were nurtured at the bosom of Corporate America, Red Ranger has a vision statement, too.

The short version is "Small Boat; Big View."

The long version is "Sailors, at one with the tides and the weather. A boat, filled with friends, safe and well-handled. A journey that engages the world directly." Sailors. Boat. Journey.

What's important here is to be sensitive to the danger of running aground. How does one manage a large, bad surprise?

Dream Navigation

Dreams live in a world that's a maze of shoal waters. There are an infinite number of ways of saying "no" to a dream. What happens to a dream deferred? Ask Langston Hughes; it's a sensitive subject.

There's only one way to say "yes" to a dream: embrace it, become one with it, be it. And yes, it's okay to quote Richard O'Brien's Rocky Horror Picture Show here.

Literally Dreaming

In order to promote actual dreaming—not figurative dreaming—CA invented her own version of the RV Superbag. She made 25 tabs for the sleeping bag and 25 tabs on the sheets. These are tied together to create a tidy, washable sheet liner inside a warm sleeping bag. For bags, we bought inexpensive Coleman Green Valley bags. Instead of $300 or more, we're into this for about $100 (2 bags plus 2 cheap sheets.)

Plus labor.

We have two cabins, plus the saloon settee. That's six sleeping bags and six sheets. It's also 150 little tabs to be cut, folded, ironed, sewn into a tab and then hand-sewn to each sheet and each sleeping bag.

Did I mention the labor?

The Vision Thing

The sails (Stitching Failures) were one of those unexpected shoals. There have been others.

When we were circumnavigating DelMarVa, we found one of those unexpected obstructions. We were leaving Solomons, MD, on a blustery morning. Wind from the N at 10-15 (barely reaching past 20). We went roaring down the Pawtuxtent, carefully watching our marke. There's a light at Drum Point; from there you head to a pair of buoys about 3.5 miles away that mark the shipping lanes in the bay.

However.

Between Drum Point and the marks, there's an "obstruction" on the chart. While it seems so easy to skirt the obstruction, current often plays tricksy with a boat. Even though the tide was falling, I think we were set N by the river current, and didn't have a good sense of where we were.

CA saved the day. She had been watching two other boats which didn't head as far north as us. She saw the fish traps, took the wheel from Mr. Benmar (the autopilot) and steered us away from the obstruction and out into open water. Crisis averted.

Walkies and Dreamies

This weekend we took two important walkies that refreshed our dreams.

First was a trip to West Marine. CA has a Birthday gift certificate (thanks, Bill!) that we need to spend wisely. Browsing the aisles helped us renew our vision. There's a lot of things we no longer need. And a few things we might need. Dreaming about what we could need—and what we don't—helped steer us back on course.

Yes, the new sails are a big expense. But spending some of our savings is not the end of the world. It's inconvenient. But—really—we knew we were going to face this expense sooner or later.

The second dreamy walk was on the Virginia Beach boardwalk. The sun was out. Seas were flat. Breeze was 10-15. The air was clear. There were bunches of fishing boats out in the Atlantic. We had a great lunch at Catch 31.

Instead of simply sitting around Norfolk waiting for the sails, we now have a bunch of things to do while we're waiting. The doing is also a part of the dream.