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If Wanderlust Strikes, Their House Goes, Too

By CELIA BARBOUR -- The New York Times -- June 3

FOR most people, a home is an anchor. It secures you to a particular spot and dampens the occasional impulse to set off in pursuit of a crazy dream.

But for Brian Nesbitt and Alicia Collins, home exerts just the opposite force: get out of here, it says to them ? the sooner the better. That?s because they live with their cat and dog on a 44-foot sloop, the Sarabande, docked at a marina in New Jersey. And on a sailboat, you can?t help yearning to see the world.

?Everybody has plans,? Ms. Collins said. ?And they say the more you wait, the less likely you are to go ahead with it.?

Their own plan is to cruise down to the Caribbean and drift around the islands, then pass through the Panama Canal, stop off at the Gal?pagos, and finally visit Pitcairn, a South Pacific island they?ve read about.

Such is next year?s itinerary, at any rate. For now, they are working on the boat and saving up for their journey. Both commute to jobs in Manhattan, crossing the river by PATH train or water taxi.

Mr. Nesbitt, 28, is a projectionist in the private screening room at Soho House, a private club and hotel in the meatpacking district. Ms. Collins, 27, is a media coordinator for Lifetime Television. ?I kind of view my job now as a way to fund the boat, and not so much as a career path,? she said.

Five years ago, when they had just started dating, neither was an avid sailor. ?I?d been on a sailboat,? Ms. Collins said, ?but we didn?t really know what we were doing.?

Mr. Nesbitt had grown up in landlocked Oklahoma. Nonetheless, a weekend trip to Montauk left them yearning for a way to spend more time out on the water. So they scanned Craigslist and found the Stardust, a small sailboat that they docked in Sheepshead Bay, not far from their Brooklyn apartment. ?It was so cute,? Mr. Nesbitt said of the Stardust.

?That was our first love,? Ms. Collins said.

The Stardust did not turn them into sailors right away. ?We thought we?d get into sailing, and instead we got into fixing up old boats,? Mr. Nesbitt said. And the Stardust needed considerable work. Boats are typically thought of as the toys of the rich because they require so much maintenance, and their owners wind up hiring crews of people to do it for them.

That wasn?t an option for Ms. Collins and Mr. Nesbitt. ?We figured we can do it ourselves,? she said.

?I?m into making things work,? Mr. Nesbitt said.

Ms. Collins added, ?All Brian needs is a book and some time to stare at it, and he can get anything done.?

Yet even when it was up and running, the Stardust was tiny. ?Brian was always knocking his head on the ceiling,? Ms. Collins said. ?I hated that sound.?

So two years ago, they sold the Stardust and bought the 34-foot Hambo, also from Craigslist. ?It?s where I find almost all our stuff,? Mr. Nesbitt said.

Last fall, not long after they had finished refurbishing the Hambo, their current boat came into their lives, quite serendipitously.

Strolling through Jersey City one evening a year earlier, they had stumbled across some intriguing trash, including a sail and several nautical maps. The couple began lingering near the house that had discarded them, and, sure enough, one day the owner was on his porch, smoking. ?We were kind of dazzled by him,? Ms. Collins said. ?Here?s this Hemingway-esque guy who has sailed all over the world.? He invited them in and served them top-shelf Scotch.

Barely a year after they met, he offered the couple his boat. They declined. ?We?d never be able to afford a boat like this ? never, never,? Ms. Collins said. ?But he wanted us to have the boat. He was like, ?Don?t worry about the finances.? ?

So they arranged a deal: ?Whatever we got for Hambo was what we?d pay him for Sarabande,? Mr. Nesbitt said. That turned out to be $11,000; they pay an additional $750 a month in docking fees.

The Sarabande is larger and much better equipped than the Hambo. It has top-of-the line electronics, sophisticated navigation equipment, a water maker (to make seawater potable), a generator and even heat and air-conditioning. With its diesel tanks full, it can stay at sea for 90 days.

But the Sarabande was in even worse shape than the couple?s previous boats. It had been dry-docked ? and ignored ? for several years. ?The whole boat was like a mold-ateria,? Mr. Nesbitt said. ?It was disgusting. When it would rain, it was like it was raining in here.?

And so all through the last winter the couple worked, night after night, often long after midnight. What they didn?t know how to repair, they learned. ?We are always digging ourselves in too deep,? Ms. Collins said. ?We take on projects we don?t really know how to do, and then we have to tear them out and redo them.?

Mr. Nesbitt said, ?We?ll get to the point where a project is ruining every aspect of our lives.?

The boat was tented in plastic to keep out the freezing winter winds, but it didn?t have a working bathroom, so they had to walk over to the marina?s.

All the while, they were becoming more seaworthy themselves. Mr. Nesbitt now counts among his skills diesel mechanic, fiberglass expert, and wind-generator and refrigerator repairman. Ms. Collins has kept right up with him.

But her favorite new skill is cooking, and she excels at it, at least to judge by the pound cake and raspberry sauce she served. Not only was the cake made from scratch, but she had ground the flour from whole grains herself, using a recently acquired grain mill. ?Flour goes bad at sea,? she explained, ?so you have to start with the grain.?

She also takes pride in the boat?s curtains. ?I recently went on a sewing binge,? she said. And the couple oversee a potted herb garden on the poop deck.

All this work doesn?t leave a whole lot of time for socializing. ?Since we got Sarabande, we?ve seen our friends maybe five times,? Mr. Nesbitt said.

?Some people don?t understand why we?re so dedicated to the boat,? Ms. Collins said. Including their mothers. ?Our moms give us books like ?Total Loss: A Collection of 45 First-Hand Accounts of Yacht Losses at Sea,? ? she added, pulling the thick volume down from one of their newly built bookshelves. It?s one of only 30 or so books on board. Boats breed a kind of asceticism ? there simply isn?t room to be a pack rat.

?It?s the less-is-more sort of thing,? Ms. Collins said, ?combined with self-reliance.?

But for a sailor, self-reliance never comes at the expense of cooperation. ?There?s a real community among nautical people,? Mr. Nesbitt said, and by all accounts, it extends around the globe.

?People are always willing to lend a helping hand,? Ms. Collins said, ?because there are so many things, like the wind, that are completely out of your control.?