You know how life can go sometimes. One day I was sitting in Tyee marina (Tacoma Washington) on board M’Lady dreaming of the up coming race season and trying to decided what the next toy for my boat would be when the offer came. A few months before I had applied for a job with NASA at the Johnson Space Center, Houston Texas. You know one of those long shots. It had been a long time since the interview and I was sure that they had hired some mad scientist with a list of qualifications as long as his arm, besides my working career is only something I do to keep myself busy when I’m not sailing. Well as you can guess I was astonished that NASA wanted a full time dreamer to go to work for them. Something about a Space Stations. Oh will, who cares it’s a job and I would get a chance to sail in a new environment.

So the next thing you know the move was on. I had agreed to pick up and move from the Northwest to Texas. Of course being the dreamer that I am the first thing that came across my mind was to sail to Houston. I sent messages out on the internet looking for information about routes, ports along the way, weather information you know stuff like that. I even contacted the Panama Canal about arrangements for passage. It was going to be a 5000 nautical mile sail form Seattle to Galveston Bay. The Trip of a lifetime. I would sail through the Panama Canal, maybe even write a book about the adventure. Maybe this would be the start of a entire new life style. At last I was going to sail into the sunset with the likes of Hal Roth, and Joshua Slocum.

Then reality hit. NASA wanted me to start TOMORROW. Not in ninety days, or six months which is the amount of time I would need to make a trip of this distance. My dreams went from picturing myself laying on a Baja beach along the way to talking to truck drivers. M’Lady was to make the trip to Houston doing sixty knots to weather.

Now it’s one thing to throw all your stuff in a semi and ship it off across the country and another to load ones sailboat on a truck that was going to be passing over the Rocky Mountains. That was something I didn’t like to think about. It was like sending your first born off to war. For the first time in years M’Lady would have someone other than myself steering her. I had a million and one fears of what could happen to her along the road. What if the trucks brakes go out. What if some little old lady pulls out in front of her. How would she do on a trip of this distance. I felt like I should sit up on the bow and ride along with her, comforting her as she passed under overpasses, and making sure that she didn’t have any tailgaters along the way.

 The day came to pull M’Lady’s mast and to load her on the trailer (Thank God for sailing buddies and I had plenty of them to help me through the ordeal), oh I don’t mean there was a lot of work in stepping a mast, with a good crane operator and the helper on the ground it only took a few minutes, I’m talking about comforting me. My good friend was going to be subjected to elements that she had never seen before. Within a couple hours M’Lady was loaded up and ready to roll. I took one last look , said good-bye and turned around. I did not want to see her rolling down the road. The next time I was to see M’Lady was when she was being lifted into the blocks on the shores of Galveston Bay.

 The next ten days would be the longest ten days of my life. I didn’t know just how long it would take the truck to get across the country. After the first week I was watching the phone closely. The plan was for the marina to give me a call when she arrived. I had mixed emotions. I was anxious to hear that M’Lady was here and all right, but I didn’t want the truck driver going too fast either. Then the call came in. She had arrived and from the window that the marina operator was looking out of, she looked to be in one piece.

 I jumped in the car and headed down to see how she had faired. As I drove up I could see that she had picked up a lot of road dirt along the way, but she had made it to Texas with no major bumps or bruises. After she was lifted into her cradle I ran up the ladder and on board get a closer look at her. As I went below I found that all my fears were in vain. M’Lady had made the trip with flying colors. I have a salty old ball cap that I always have hanging on a coat hook just inside the cabin. As I went below I saw that my ball cap was still hanging on the hook. It hadn’t even been disturbed. M’Lady was in her new home.