Twist of Fate

Wow, a lot has been happening lately to push us from the suburbs to the sailing part of our plan! 

We’re big believers that things always happen for a reason in life, but the way things have been falling into place for us has made us wonder if there's some divine intervention or something going on that really wants us to accomplish our goal. It’s really crazy how things can happen when you least expect them to.  We also realize that it’s been a while since we posted, as we were waiting for something relevant to post about.  Well, get ready for an eye feast my friends, as we download you on our happenings from the past two weeks.

Shortly after we came up with this plan, and realized that our dream of doing this could actually become the reality of doing this, Matt was laid off from the company that he’s been working at (steadily) for nearly 8 years.  Whomp, whomp. (Side line note… Any of you that know Matt, know that this is is the typical story line for him: something really great happens, he’s all excited, you’re really rooting for him – then bam! – something bad happens.  But it always turns out OK in the end. Story of his life, I swear!)

So, with no secondary income coming in, we thought we had to put the plan on hold temporarily until we got this sorted out and back on track again.  Matt, being the eternal optimist and extremely resourceful, took this as an opportunity to figure out how to align his career with our future goal of living on a boat and sailing around the Caribbean.  So he took matters (and his resume) into his own hands and began scouting out boatyards and marinas in the Annapolis area.  He contacted a very reputable yacht sales company, spoke with the owner, and was hired a week later!  He starts his first official day as a boat technician tomorrow.  Not only is he gainfully employed once more, but at an amazing company learning skills that will be extremely valuable to us and others once we begin life on the boat.  Did I mention that he has better working hours (no more waking up at 4am and driving to DC!), works in Annapolis and gets to wear flip flops to work in the summer!  Love this man like crazy and am so proud of him for making something amazing out of a potentially bad situation.  Twist of Fate #1.

Over the weekend, Matt got an interesting email while in Charlotte on another business opportunity (I’ll let him post more about that one, but it’s a great opportunity to set us up for some residual income to lengthen the burn time of our trip!  #bumsforever!).  Back to the message… a woman contacted Matt about potentially renting/purchasing our house this summer.  Turns out she is planning to move back to Maryland from California with her husband and was looking to return to Severna Park.  Convinced she was a fraud and this was some marketing scheme, he called her back and spoke to her for nearly and hour and was convinced that she is completely legit.  Turns out that Matt had updated our housing info on Zillow after we had it reappraised, and had listed his email in the info.  So, we potentially have a renter/buyer for when we find our boat and need to sell the house.  Who knows where it will lead, but the fact that someone inquired about purchasing our house completely out of the blue is a pretty freaky coincidence.  Twist of Fate #2.

And finally, while in the throes of all of this exciting news, I received a text from my aunt asking if we had any furniture we wanted to sell to my cousin, who had just bought a house.  Talk about perfect timing here.  Do we have furniture to sell?? Well yes actually, we do! We were able to unload our entire 5pc queen bedroom set for a great price and will no doubt be able to give him even more as we reduce our household stuff and he builds his up.  It’s a shame we don’t have the boat lined up yet or else we would have seen if he wanted everything else in the house too! $ell, $ell, $ell!! It’s amazing how detached we’ve become to all of these things that we once thought were so necessary. (Ok, ok WE really meant I).  In the end they’re just things, and they’re actually pretty easy to let go.  Twist of Fate #3.

Turns out things are sort of all falling into place.  We’re excited to resume our boat search and connect with a realtor about getting our house listed.  We really wanted to stay in our house thru the summer, and still may.  We definitely don’t want to rush such a big investment (not just financially, either!) by settling for any boat that presents itself.  Plus, there are a lot of holes in the Twist of Fate breakdown above. But, like we said before, life just has a funny way of working itself out and it looks like it’s working that way for us!  Stay tuned!