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From Cruising World, December 2002:

Here Comes the (Cruising World) Bride
by Sharon Ragle


I had a vision. While not a sailor and not given to hallucinations, I dreamed of buying a boat and sailing around the world. Dreams must be handled with care; like angel wings, they can tear or turn to dust if touched with too heavy a hand. "When a great adventure is handed to you," aviatrix Amelia Earhart reportedly said, "you simply mustn't say no." I was operating on that principle but proceeding most delicately.

I learned to sail at the Women at the Helm sailing school on Galveston Bay in Texas, not far from Houston, where I lived. Being neither rich nor knowledgable about the sea, I decided to buy a used boat of a design that had already sailed around the world. She was Alexandra, a sloop-rigged Allied Seawind II, whose predecessor, the foot-shorter, foot-narrower Seawind ketch, was the first fiberglass boat to circle the world.

Now I had to learn the boat's systems and equip the boat for offshore work. I confidently proceeded with my plans, even though I was unable to answer many of the questions that nagged at me: Could I, with my aversion to math, learn navigation? Could I sail well enough? What about storms? How do I finance the trip? Was I brave enough and strong enough to complete my mission? However, I was certain the answers would present themselves in due course.

But one issue crept up on me: I didn't want to go alone. Damn, this was a tough one. I was divorced, and i'd been single for 18 years. I'd raise my children alone, was content with my life, and confident that I'd be single for the rest of it. Now what was I to do? Well, I was going to have to find a partner.

Like any good circumnavigator wanna-be, I read Cruising World, which fired my imagination with South Sea visions and filled my head with tips for maintaining batteries, anchoring securely, and trimming sails. I also read the classified-advertising section, where crew-wanted and positions-available ads appear. Hey, I thought to myself, how about placing an ad for a sailing partner?

The classified ad, in the November 1992 issue, read: "Attractive 49-y/o lady sailor is seeking a SWM of same generation as friend/possible permanent partner. The oceans are waiting. I don't want to go alone!" That month, I received 125 letters. Hmmm — this wasn't going to be easy. Fortunately, my grown children were having great fun finding a partner for Mom.

I read all the letters, tried to answer as many as I could, and told the writers of the ones I answered that I was going to sail around the world and — what the heck! As long as I'm dreaming, I might as well dream big — that I wanted to get married. A happy marriage with a loving and supportive husband — now that was a big dream. And maybe I deserved that experience in this lifetime.

Most of the men who responded thought marriage was a good idea, too, but found the idea of sailing around the world quite daunting. Silly me; I thought marriage by far the more difficult of the two enterprises.

Then came the letter from Dave — a widower, married 41 years to the same woman in a good and happy marriage and loving her all that time. He owned a boat, a Tartan 37 named Tigger, and he, too, wanted to circumnavigate. The whole family voted for me to meet him.

We met on a Friday evening for dinner, and it took a full 15 minutes before I was humming (to myself, of course) "Here Comes the Bride." He proposed the following Tuesday, and — call us a couple of crazy kids — we married three weeks later. Less than a year later, Tigger and her crew of two embarked on her circumnavigation. And that was just the start.

We trasited the Panama Canal, swam with sea lions in the Galápagos, dodged a freighter in the Pacific, rounded South Africa's "Cape of Storms" in — what else — a storm, viewed achingly beautiful sunsets in the Tuamotus and kaleidoscopic reef fish on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, and almost touched the Southern Cross as it dipped down from the heavens in the South Pacific Ocean.

We closed our circle and returned to the United States in June 1998. Dave and I are still partners, still madly in love. He did know how to make a good marriage, and becoming a Cruising World bride turned out to be a brilliant idea.
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