Harbor of dreams

We will lift the boat out of the water on Monday the 30th of May, in order to prepare her for the great departure! On sunday the 29th of May we'll sail her from Uitdam to Monnickendam, the harbor of the village where I partly grew up and where my grandfather had his last sailboat. My grandfather is not alive anymore but the boat is still there. When I was in high-school I would often come to this harbor to escape from maths and schoolschedules and dream about my future travels. I imagined our little 6 meter Jouet to be my ship of dreams and I would sail away with her imagining we'd cross oceans and discover new worlds. When I finished high-school I came to this harbor to ask 'the old guys' how to build a boat, for I wanted to cross the Atlantic. They laughed at me and told me it would at least take 4 years and a bunch of money. I'd better buy a boat. I walked the docks in search of a boat for sale, but in that time I didn't have a penny and I was terribly impatient to free myself from all the weight of knowledge and intellect I had collected in school. I wanted to be wild, to be a wanderer, a discoverer. I was fed up with our society in which everything was perfectly arranged and organized. I felt as if my life was a pre-arranged marriage, in which I was the bride, who had no choice but to follow the rules of her broom, Mister Society. Boring! I wanted to be free and follow my own dreams. I needed adventure, the unknown, empty horizons. I would realize my explorer's dream! So I forgot about building or buying boats and decided to hitch-hike. First I didn't know whether it would be possible to hitch-hike on sailboats, because that was what I wanted, until somebody told me an incredible story about an Ethiopean man of two meters tall, who had no money and no sailing experience but a dream to sail around the world. He succeeded. In 4 years he circumnavigated the planet, hitch-hiking on different sail-boats and he even came back with money in his pocket! If this man can do it, I thought, I can. So I took off and crossed the Atlantic, sailed South America and the Carribean and I loved it!!!
Now it's 7 years later and I'm back in the same harbor to prepare my own dreamboat for the great voyage. Life is miracle!