The WordPress/JetPack writing prompt for today is:
f the salary was the same, what job would you be doing right now and why?
This post has a soundtrack. You should listen to the Finn Brother’s acoustic rendition of Six Months in a Leaky Boat as you read this. Yes, really, even as the title quotes another Aussie song, Little River Band’s Cool Change.
“When I was a young boy, I wanted to sail around the world.” Yep, that’s me.
Given an opportunity to make a living without concern for income, I’d crew or captain a sailing yacht (Not a motor yacht like you see on those silly Below Decks shows, an actual ‘hoist the spinnaker’ yacht).
I have some small qualifications, certificates for Competent Crew, Day Skipper, and Radio Operator from the Royal Yachting Association. I have some limited experience from those courses – taken off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, where the seas are challenging. I’ve also owned and lived aboard a small sailboat (six-metre length).
Had I had the time and money to also do the safety qualification, I would possibly have been employable on a yacht (except for rampant ageism in the industry).
But would I be doing that job right now, as the prompt asks. Well here’s the thing. I have a congenital heart defect that wasn’t caught until an incident late in adulthood. I had the access to both the medical procedure and the insurance necessary to ensure that I lived. Had I been somewhere in the South Pacific when it happened… yeah.
But, living on a yacht would also mean that my diet and level of exercise would far exceed my current junk food cravings and passive office job. That may have made me strong enough to postpone the incident indefinitely.
May have. Or not.
Coming back to “When I was a young boy, I wanted to sail around the world.” I have circumnavigated the globe twice, once east-to-west and once west-to-east. But I did it on airlines, not yachts. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve crossed the equator (and now live only 5° north of it). I have lived on a sailboat, and it’s both amazing and strenuous. I’ve sailed on a tall ship (The Solway Lass out of Airlie Beach, Australia) as a passenger.
Living on the sea has always been a dream job. But at this stage of my life, knowing what I know about my health, maybe in a dream is the right place for it.