You could spend what remains of your life collecting stories about engaging people who have chucked over their rat-race lives, bought a sailboat, and cruised the world for a year or a decade or longer. That’s because a lot of people actually do this. There are communities of cruisers, in boats of varying degrees of seaworthiness, who scud from marina to marina, living on a shoestring and scoffing at people who don’t.

Reading about these people produces a mix of regret (“We could have done that”), resentment (“I would have done that if you’d been willing, but instead I spent my years learning and unlearning new software for invoicing regional transshipment rates”), curiosity (“If it isn’t too hard maybe there’s still time”) and resignation (“If we were really that kind of couple we would know by now”).

Still, we read these accounts. Here is particularly appealing couple from the U.K.

Bill and Laurel Cooper left the drudgery of the working world, sold their lovely river-bank home, said goodbye to their grown children and started sailing the world in 1976. Yes, 1976. Now, their health compromised to a degree that makes continued cruising impractical, after 36 years bumming around, at ages 83 and 82, they are mooring for good. (Throwing in the anchor?)

In addition to their resolve to lead a rewarding life, there are several reasons why we like the Coopers.

  • They remind us that it is possible to experience a bit of adventure later in life. (Bill’s macular degeneration started to restrict their range in 2007. That means he was living a reasonably unrestricted cruising life until he was 78. Laurel had a couple of hip replacements along the way, but managed to recuperate and resume a seafaring life.)
  • They are level-headed about the demands of this supposedly romantic life. Bill: “There is nothing romantic about it all. Anyone who says they love the sea is an idiot. If you are in love with someone you don’t expect them to creep up behind you and box you on the back of the head. It’s boats I love, not the sea.”

Photo of a sailboat cruising in Croatia, by Andrzej Mlynarz, via Wikimedia Commons