Somewhere in the paragraphs below I have hidden two words from my desk calendar of seldom used words. This week they are Careen and Tittynope. Consider it a mini wordsearch for the eagle-eyed, and no, the prize is simply the smug glow of a job well done.

To be honest, the last week or so had been a bit emotionally dramatic. The last week has felt like a changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. No onlookers. No bearskin hats. Just the quiet, slightly bewildered swapping of one grand idea for another inside my own skull. Our (OK mainly my) dreams had drifted from a romantic notion of sailing the seven seas in search of good food and inexpensive adventure. Following a heart to heart about boring passages and closed eateries, this circumnavigation idea has turned into a multimodal plan of “sail what we can, fly and drive what we can’t”. For me, that was not a small step. That was a full-on mind jump – a mental gymnastics routine with a wobble on the landing.

Now I don’t know if I have ever properly explained the motivation behind this whole caper. So let me rewind.

Since I was fifteen, I have cared for elderly people. Not many people know this, but just as you can foster children, you can also foster the elderly. My parents fostered three elderly folks when I was a teenager, and those three became part of our family. Waking at three in the morning to remind an old chap where the toilet was, became as natural to me as making tea. In that time, I met people who had lived every life you could imagine. Rich or Poor. Content or Bitter. People who had grabbed life by the collar and people who had watched life walk past from behind a net curtain. I never wanted to be the person in a care home who could read out a bucket list, neatly written, but with nothing crossed out. I met plenty of those people. Their regrets hung in the care home air like old smoke.

My life plan cemented itself some years later when two ladies I cared for had a conversation I overheard.

Elsie and Ethel would to sit next to each other and watch television; using whatever news it told, to chat about life and the world. They both had modest financial backgrounds. However, their outlooks could not have been more different. I remember listening to their chatter one day when a news story hit the headlines from around the world. Elsie turned to Ethel and remarked on the events.

“My word. Would you believe it? A President of a country doing THAT with a young lady from legislative affairs.”

“Poor girl. That would never happen in our day,” replied Ethel.

“You’re very right. Disgusting. Mind you, she worked in the right department, didn’t she.”

They both chuckled. So did I.

“A President!” said Elsie.

“Uh hmmm.” agreed Ethel

“He lives in the White House, you know. In Washington.”

Ethel nodded.

“Have you ever been?” asked Elsie. Ethel shook her head. “Oh Ethel, you should go. Frank and I took a jumbo jet to America and visited Washington, we even had a tour of the White House. It’s beautiful…”

Elsie would then reminisce about how in her younger days she and her husband had enjoyed a holiday to that location. She would regale the room with a story of the plane journey, the places they stayed and the things they did with great accuracy, and often with a memorable quip. This was not a one-off story. Elsie had taken a number of holidays with her husband over the years to all sorts of far-off lands.

Two things about those conversations used to make me smile. The first was the smile and the joy the memory brought to the lady. Her face would light up as she recalled how she had seen the world, what happened, who said what. That light infected everyone who listened. The second was the fact that she would often encourage her good friend and chair-neighbour to go!. Now both ladies needed help to get in and out of bed, let alone travel the world; but Elsie never lost the dream to look further than her front door and that was a joy to watch.

As their carer I knew them both well. Both had been married, had few if any children, and both had lived in a small two up two down terraced house in post war Coventry. Ethel had never been out of the UK in her whole life. She never even had a passport. Ethel and her husband had been to the same small hotel in Margate for their annual holiday for over forty years. I remember organising a coach trip to Hunstanton for the residents. Ethel had nearly wet her pants with excitement to see Hunstanton. Now, please understand; Hunstanton is a simple place. But it was a different place to Margate, and Ethel absolutely loved it. I have never seen anyone be so thrilled at being wheeled in her chair onto the edge of the sandy beach and eating winkles from a paper bag.

I was left feeling that when I was too old and frail to live life as fully as I would like, I would much prefer to be the person telling the stories rather than the one listening to them.

But I wondered how one lady had managed to do this and the other had not? My theory was not one of choice, though of course that could have been it. I theorised that, with meagre funds, it must have come down to how they spent what they had. Maybe Ethel and her husband had bought a twin tub washing machine when they first came out. Maybe she was one of the few houses to have fitted carpets. Or a vacuum cleaner. My own Nan at the time would tell me how one house in her street had bought a television set and neighbours used to stand and watch it through their front room window. Britain was different then and people always are.

I decided that Elsie and her husband Frank had spent their disposable income on experiences, not products, and seemed happier in old age because of it. So I decided I would do the same.

Now my mother once said that my brother and I differed very much as children. My older brother would take his pocket money to buy sweets and lollies. He would retain the ice lolly sticks, clean them, and make new iced lollies from orange squash to sell to other children, asking for the stick back to repeat the task of course… Me? Apparently, I would buy the same things but give half my sweets away. I clearly did not have his business acumen.

Ever since learning how small life changes can make a big difference in life experiences; I have tried to be more frugal with my money. I have since then never had a new car, never owned the latest phone or best television; never spent much on clothes or jewellery. I will never be a rich man, but if I have enough to make my dreams of travel and seeing the world become a reality, I will be a happy man.

And so here we are. My laptop sits half filled with photographs of destinations yet ventured and experiences yet enjoyed. A dream dashed by the realities of sea sickness and the boredom of waiting weeks just to get to the next good anchorage.

She is right of course. Pookie has steadfastly helped and encouraged my ambitions. Let’s face it, she paid for the boat. But her viewpoint about distances between safe harbours and beautiful anchorages can’t be ignored. The woman who spends her working life making television look easy, has a low tolerance for a 7mph cat that turns a simple hop between islands into an endurance test.

As regular readers will know, Pookie lies down the moment the swell picks up. She disappears below with the quiet dignity of a passenger on a cross-channel ferry in a force seven. I take the helm. I don’t get sea sick. This is the unspoken arrangement that keeps our marriage afloat. Pookie looks after the kitchen and will inspect every plate for the last tittynope of sauce. In her mind any chef who has faced MasterChef judges does not let a good morsel leave the kitchen unaccounted for. I on the other hand look after the boat. The division of labour works beautifully until the moment the boat refuses to move faster than a brisk walk and the kitchen starts to feel like a very small cupboard.

So my dreams are not ending. This is not the end of the Sawasdeekat adventure. Far from it. This is a desire to pack adventure into whatever time we have left on this planet, and whatever funds we have left in the bank.

To that end we are going to get our trusty water steed ready again for ocean travel and take Sawasdeekat down to Charleston to await the best time to sail the trade winds back to the Mediterranean. Charleston suits us. Safe Harbor Marina sits on water that has been welcoming ships since English settlers planted their first permanent settlement here in 1670; within thirty years the town had grown into a busy and wealthy port. Ship traffic has fed this harbour for more than 350 years, which means Sawasdeekat will be tying up alongside a maritime tradition far older and far more distinguished than her crew. It feels like the right sort of harbour for a couple of novices who still occasionally wrap the wrong sheet around the wrong winch.

The trade winds themselves have a lovely history. Sailors have used them for centuries to cross the Atlantic, and the Spanish once called that stretch of ocean the Sea of the Ladies because the passage ran so smoothly that a lady could make the crossing in comfort. Despite this, Pookie still had her reservations. So I shall pass that image straight to Peter. Our friend Peter has offered to sail Sawasdeekat across the Atlantic with some of his friends, and Pookie and I will fly back to Gibraltar to meet him. The Sea of the Ladies sounds far more elegant than the reality of Peter and his crew wrestling a flogging sail. Pookie and I will enjoy a cold drink on dry land and pretend we were never worried.

The new plan mixes the romantic with the practical. We will sail the ocean passages when the ocean makes sense. We will fly and drive when the ocean does not. We will return to the United States and visit the Far East and Australia as planned, but we are likely to do this using an RV rather than a seven mile per hour catamaran. This has clear advantages. Less time spent travelling. More time spent enjoying the destinations and an ability to visit inland places with ease. Those inland places are likely to be wildly more exciting than another marina that sells the same three flavours of ice cream and an occasional fridge magnet. I have decided, our RV will not careen down mountain roads like a runaway shopping trolley, because I intend to drive it with the calm dignity of a man who has already embarrassed himself on a catamaran. (I am already regretting that line…)

I can already hear the purists sharpening their pencils. A sailing blog that embraces a motorhome. A couple who crossed an ocean now talking about campsites with hookups. But here is the thing. The whole point of this adventure was never the boat. The boat was the vehicle. The point was Elsie. The point was the light on her face when she remembered the White House tour, the Jumbo Jet, and the story she had told a hundred times and would tell a hundred more.

Pookie and I sat on the deck a few evenings ago, the sun doing its usual theatrical business over the water, and we had one of those conversations that rearranges the furniture in your head. She said something that stuck with me.

“I don’t mind the sailing,” she said. “I mind the waiting. I mind spending three days to get somewhere I could drive to in an afternoon.”

She is not wrong. A catamaran at seven miles per hour is a beautiful thing on a blue water passage. It is a less beautiful thing when you are trying to see a continent. The world is wide and our time is not. The RV will let us chase the horizon at a speed that does not require a podcast subscription to survive.

I’d like to think Elsie would approve. She never cared how she got to the White House. She cared that she got there. She cared that she had the story. She cared that she could turn to Ethel and say, with genuine wonder, “You should go!”

We will still sail. Sawasdeekat will still carry us across oceans and into anchorages that make you forget your own name. But she will no longer be the only vehicle in the garage. She will be the one with the sails and the romance. The RV will be the one with the working fridge and the ability to stop at a vineyard on a whim.

This is not the blog I had planned. For that, you will have to wait until next week. But I hope you have enjoyed this little aside while waiting to see what befalls our journey yet. Take care, my friends. We will see you next week.