How it all began

If you don’t like the soppy stuff, you may wish to skip this post. If on the other hand you would like a cool pick up line, keep reading.

Racer boy (Marty) meets corporate girl (me, Tessa)… on a plane.

It is pretty cool right. That’s right we meet on flight QF540 departing 5pm from Sydney to Brisbane on 18 October 2013. Corporate girl was meant to be on a later flight. Arriving at the airport early with no carry-on luggage this time some-how I got the last seat on the flight to go home. That never happens on a Friday night… Amazing, right. It was meant to happen.

Over the next 80 minutes we discussed Terry Pratchett, the author of the book Marty was trying to read and had to put down because he felt I was watching him. And I was. I was enjoying his energy as he read the book. At that stage I had not been introduced to Terry Pratchett. That was soon to change. We talked about many things, art, designers, industrial design, bringing manufacturing back into Australia (Pretty cool right), environmentally friendly packaging and designers and we both learnt we shared the same designer as our favourite being Phillip Starke… For me I had not talked, design, industrial design and many of the topics we traversed in many years. It was an amazing conversation.

As the pilot announced the plane had started to descend, Marty asked me if I had room in my life for one more friend. That was a pretty cool line. 

He told me later by the time the plane landed knew he was in love. I got off the plane and knew I was in serious trouble…

Was I ready for another relationship? Well, ready or not… 

I fell in love with Marty because he lives his life. He is active, he does things, has energy and he will to give things a go. When we meet, he was racing Formula 1 Superbikes across Australia. He has been a team rider and as well as riding for himself. Because he loves it. I thought that is pretty cool. Some would say crazy. Both are true… 

As I said, I feel in love with Marty because he lives his life. So, boy meet girl and falls in love. 18 months later we get married. I was 48 years young and Marty was 63 young when we married… Both starting again to build our financial security having been divorced before. It is an interesting space to navigate. 

All along, what I have loved is Marty passion for living life. Our conversation regularly turns to retirement, semi-retirement what does that look like for the two of us. Especially, given the age gap between us. We had talked about when to retire, where to retire and sailing when we retired. Our thoughts in the early days were to own a batch (beachside shack) in NZ and a sail-boat. And then our thoughts started shifting… 

We had been talking about “grey-nomading” on the water when we retire.

And have asked ourselves, why wait to go live-aboard. Were we ready, could we live on that small a space (you should see the size of the house we are in now), what would we do with our possessions, cars, bikes (yes there are a few of those) and many more questions? After a while our questions fell away and we can’t think of one good reason to wait…

In fact, we started thinking of quiet a few reasons to do so sooner rather than later. We have had close friends, have strokes, heart attacks, knee problems, hip problems, back problems and others while not limited physically, had a more sedentary mindset. Maybe we are in denial of our age. Maybe we are lucky not to be limited by our bodies. Whatever the reasons we are jumping into our adventure. We bought our live-aboard yacht. We took possession of her on 10 October 2019. So, next year some time we will move on-board. And yes, we will be moving with the dogs and the cat. Yikes, I hear you cry. I am sure there will be a few stories to follow…

On this blog will share our journey of downsizing, going live-aboard and practicing the art of retirement. Oh, and off course… Sailing.

On a final and important note, when Marty was racing he often get asked, “Aren’t you getting too old for that?” To which he usually replies, “Yeh, you’re are right, I should wait until I am a little younger.” 

And hence our philosophy is; 

What are you waiting for…
Live your life

#Ilovesailing #TandM #Whatareyouwaitingfor #liveyourlife