Fair Winds Ceilydh

(awesome card from Letterary Press on etsy)

The friendships you make on the water form fast and deep. I will never forget the first time Evan rowed his funky, handmade dink over to our boat on his way to work across the creek and introduced himself. He and his wife Diane had just sailed to the Chesapeake from Vancouver and were settling in to refill the cruising kitty. It was unusual to meet another couple aboard a boat in their 20's, so we formed an instant bond.

(Ev, me, T, Di, baby Maia)

A few years later, baby in arms they decided to move back home to Vancouver and start again with a bigger boat. To hide the tears we wanted to shed upon their leaving, we sent them off with a bang by doing our best midnight graffiti work before they drove back to Canada.

(would you believe they didn't like our work?)

Despite the obnoxious send off, they decided to stay friends with us. You can just ask the phone company, we still keep in VERY close contact and have even managed some cross-country visits.

(Zach & Maia, Washington DC March 2009)

It's not often you find people that you click as naturally as we all do. We share the sailing and voyaging bug, we share a passion for writing and photography, we're all firmly parked in the only child camp, we're all great salsa dancers (oh whoops, sorry Lumberjacks, not quite). And Diane was responsible for opening my eyes to the world of AP/ breastfeeding/ co-sleeping/ intactivism etc.

We've shared good times (oh that Tequila Almendrado!), we've comforted each other through storms (I wouldn't have stayed afloat when my mama died without them), and we've shared intimate moments (I got to photograph the birth of their daughter). So to see them fulfill their dream of setting off again on their boat is as close as we can come to doing it ourselves (we'll get there someday soon).

I get it. I KNOW what it took for them to have this moment and I know how they're feeling right now. It's that blend of HOORAY and HOLY CRAP!

So rather sneaking into some harbor and sending them off again with my best graffiti work, I offer them this message from the heart. When a sailor sends another sailor off we don't say good bye, we say Fair Winds and Following Seas... because the world is round, and sailors know that means friends will always meet again.

(follow their adventures on Ceilydh Sets Sail)

(image ripped off from Ceilydh web site)