What does it cost to cruise?
EXPERIENCING what can only be described as a man’s ‘young-life crisis’, twenty-one year old Andrew Godfrey puzzled over his latest dilemma: “what should I do with my life?”
The path should have been obvious. A recent graduate with his Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering, a career in water treatment for industrial power plants awaited him.
But he said to his girlfriend of just one year, which is me: “I need a new goal.”
I am wrapping Christmas presents as snow begins to fall in our hometown, the former Winter Olympic venue Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, 1,000 miles away from any ocean.
I nod. “Okay, like what?”
“I need something that will inspire me, something to keep my energy up, keep me purpose driven….”
I nod more, “Okay, okay….” waiting with bated breath for what would be the most unlikely of suggestions:
“What would you think about sailing around the world?”
It does not matter that he has never stepped foot on one single sailboat in his life.
A sailor at heart will be drawn by the ‘siren song’ even across miles of barren desert and alpine mountain. But how? More importantly….
HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?
Lucky for Andrew, he had paired himself up, not with an accountant or an actuary, or even a mathematician; he had hitched his wagon to a young and easily-agitated litigation attorney: a.k.a. a barrister in the Australian language.
While an accountant, or an actuary or a mathematician may have had easier answers for this ever important question, this litigation attorney says, as she should, “… it depends.”
“Depend on what?” Andrew asked.
“And that is the real question, isn’t it?” I replied.
Over the course of the next few years part of our
