FULL CIRCLE

So many years we have made the pilgrimage to Annapolis for the sailboat show, daring to dream of a cruising life, hoping to be more than magazine sailors, to stop posing and start sailing. Year after year we were would-be cruisers buying books and charts, dreamers picking out folding bikes and bed springs, attending seminars about navigating Caribbean waters.

For many years in a row, we stood not three feet from where Good Company is tied up, watching the same demonstration of a tiny sail going up and down on nylon lines, the very system that we now use to effortlessly drop our main.

Just last fall we stood outside the sailboat show staring at an Island Packet bobbing at a mooring, silently chanting, maybe next year. Maybe next year.

It is not planning that brought us to Annapolis, the first destination at the beginning of our cruising life, because that would be contrived and even maudlin. Instead it is that uncanny circle of our lives that turns oh-so slowly but unfailingly comes back around in a perfect loop, tying up our hard-earned efforts in a big, red karmic bow.