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Printed on the front of every dollar
should be a warning that says, “Handle with care. This dollar may be
hazardous to your life.” I must never fall in love with money. Loving
money is a pathetic misdirection of my affections. Money is only a
thing; it’s not a person. Money will never love me back. It will never
stand by me through thick and thin. It doesn’t look for the good in me
or make me into a better person
Loving money gets me into trouble, because it turns my values upside
down. When I love money, I often stop loving people. I start doing
things to them to get their money. Cheating and stealing are the result
of loving money. Greed takes over when I fall in love with cash. I
start looking at the world through dollar-sign eyes. I place a monetary
value on everything including my personal relationships. I end up
looking into everyone’s wallet rather than into their heart. If I love
money, I will never get enough.
The Bible teaches that wealth is a gift of God and the ability to enjoy
it is an even bigger gift. If I am good at making money, I will
consider it a gift. If I am not consumed by the love of money, I will
also be given the ability to enjoy it.
Copyright © 2013
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Everyone wants to know how much money it costs to go cruising.
The answer is straight forward. Sailing around the world on a lean and
mean small yacht doesn't cost that much. Take a look at the young men
running these long tail boats; they live on a couple of hundred dollars
a month. If you eat the same food they do and anchor out in remote
patches of paradise, it will cost you about the same for the necessities
of life.
Lynn and Larry Pardey wrote a book about self-sufficient sailors who
roamed the seas in uncomplicated small yachts. The cardinal principle
of those voyagers was keeping it simple and having only those things on
board that they could fix. They relied on stellar seamanship and a
resourceful mind rather than on mountains of cash as they sailed around
the world. These frugal sailors worshipped at the altar of freedom.
They cruised in affordable yachts to affordable destinations, and they
had a rich life.
There are expensive high tech ways and inexpensive low tech ways of
doing things on a yacht. Take security for example. The first
single-handed circumnavigator, Joshua Slocum, had major security
concerns during his voyage. He placed carpet tacks on deck at night as
a low tech early warning system alerting him to the presence of
intruders sneaking on board in the dark. His system worked
exceptionally well when hostile Indians came on his boat at night in
South America near the turn of the century. His resourceful mind
created a simple, but effective, alarm that kept him safe. Today,
security conscious cruisers install electronic entry alarms and motion
detectors to do the same thing. I think that Slocum's carpet tacks were
superior in their ability to discourage barefoot bandits.
When I had my Westsail 32, I learned how to steer my ten ton cruiser
using sheet to tiller steering. It was exciting to make my boat steer
itself without the benefit of an expensive electronic autopilot. Sheet
to tiller self-steering cost me only a few dollars to set up. I used an
old turning block, some rubber bungee, and a short length of line
joining the tiller to the mainsheet. More than twenty years later on
Exit Only, I have an electronic autopilot that costs thousands of
dollars and consumes more than fifty amps a day when sailing offshore.
The power hungry electronic autopilot requires either high output
alternators, solar panels, wind generators, or all three to slake its
thirst for amps.
Today, sailors regard engines as essential equipment for offshore
sailing, and I'm inclined to agree with them. Nevertheless, Joshua
Slocum, Harry Pidgeon, and the Pardeys sailed around the world on small
yachts without an engine. By all accounts, all three of them had
frugal, but enjoyable, voyages. These exceptional sailors had modest
and uncomplicated yachts, good seamanship, endless persistence, and very
big dreams. They all proved that you don't need a mountain of money to
sail on the ocean of your dreams.
IT'S NOT THE HIGH COST OF
LIVING,
IT'S THE COST OF LIVING HIGH THAT SINKS MOST DREAMS.
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