I need to back up. Tell a story of what preceded our engagement from Close to you....a story of he and I...Part 1.
My Love was a man who fell in love with sailing after my Papa asked him if he would like to help crew on his sailboat. Years later he met a doctor friend through his brother, who had a 35 foot sailboat that he would go out on and sail in the San Francisco Bay. Many times I went as well with this wild group of friends, sailing to Sausalito for lunch or for a sail around Angel Island and by the San Francisco waterfront. The doctor, who worked as an Emergency room Doctor and was a Vietnam Veteran, had dreams of traveling to exotic places, not just sailing in the bay. Therein lies the dreams of those who sailed with the doctor, of going along as crew on his adventure.
The year before our engagement became a quest for the doctor to find his dream sailboat and the destination became the South Pacific islands of Tahiti. You might as well have laid a path to Shangri-la because my Love was just as swept up with this idea. There were trips up and down the coast of California to find the perfect boat. At last they found her. A beautiful 50 foot sloop named the Atlantis. She had a steel hull, mahogany interiors and teak decks. She was brought back up to the Richmond Boat Works for a complete overhaul. My Love and several others spent many months working on her.
The Dr. decided he wanted to rename her, something you just don't do with boats. He renamed her Mae-Ya-Nang which my Love was told meant in Thai, the Thai Goddess of the Wind. My looking it up Mae-Ya-Nang actually is believed to be a guardian spirit who lives in the prow of the boat and "requires proper treatment in return for protection against misadventure". Just note this.....
In the end my Love did not go on the trip having talked to our good friend Joel who did begin the trip. They had sailed to San Diego first to pick up crew when apparently there was trouble from the beginning with mechanical problems. Joel was so bothered with that short journey that he decided to bail out on the trip. We later heard that they made it to Tahiti but only on the return through Hawaii did the final and ultimate fate take place. They ran aground on a reef. Having been to Hawaii I find it hard to imagine having that happen, but having been to Tahiti and two of the other islands there, I could see this happen as there are many reefs around the islands.
My Love may have not made that trip at that time but we made our own journey to Tahiti a couple of years after we married. I wrote of this awhile back. Here and here are the links to two of those stories....which reminds me I never finished that story!
This song by Joni Mitchell was one that was on my mind when I would think of my sailing Lover....
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