I'm hoping that not too many of us had a divorce to blame for our desire to go sailing but here's another story that begins in
family court.
Back in 1978, I was in the middle of a bitter, protracted divorce which was initiated by my ex-wife. I had realized the marriage was a mistake almost from the beginning but, because she got pregnant early on, I decided that I would stick it out for the sake of my child. Well, ten years and three
children later, conditions had only gotten worse but the decision to leave my
children was now out of my hands. I was at the lowest point of my life.
I was at a business seminar when I met Mary Fran and knew at once that she was the perfect woman for me. She was beautiful in every way, smart,
funny and possessed of great
depth of soul and spirit. She was also doing
work that meshed with some of my most pressing business needs and we ended up having a working relationship that evolved into a close, if for the moment, platonic, friendship.
Often, when I thought about her, I saw myself wandering
lost through a barren field and suddenly coming upon a
single little daisy growing in the middle of the nothingness. The image of that lone daisy came to represent hope for a brighter future.
When all the misery was finally behind me, Mary Fran and I decided to marry and, simultaneously, fulfill a long held dream of mine to leave the mundane world behind and, for our honeymoon, literally sail off into the sunset.
After much
research, I ended up selecting a Shannon 28 as the ideal
boat for our needs. Deciding what to call her was easy. There could only be one name for her - she who had given me hope in my darkest hour -my little Mary Flower.
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