The Story of Alyria
The Dream Begins
Although some would say that the story began much earlier, (and I'm inclined to
agree with them) for simplicities sake I'll begin the story in December
of 1979. Lyndia and I had recently moved from the state of Oregon to live at
Snakelum Point on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, Washington. We loved the
lifestyle and it was the beginning of our love affair with living on islands.
The Point is a wonderful place surrounded by water on three sides with only a
few houses and plenty of quiet.
That was the month I realized that I was getting more than a little impatient
with my attempts to discover which life direction to pursue, and I knew that I
was going in circles without a goal. It was through my frustration with myself
that I knew I needed to take another tack, and so I decided to ask for help from
"The Big Guy" (or Gal if you prefer). By then I had become very familiar with
leading my life through my Spirit guidance having practiced it for the previous
four years. Shortly after sending out the call for assistance I received the
answer. I was reading a book called "Cruising in Serrafyn" (a book about a
couple who build a wooden boat and sail it around the world), when I suddenly
knew that I would do something very similar. At the time I had no sailing
experience, no boat building experience, very little money, a wife that was less
than interested in my idea (she told me that it was a dumb idea and that she
would never be involved in anything like sailing), and no idea of how to start.
But I didn't let that stop me from starting the process since (I reasoned), my
chosen path had come from a highly reputable source.
The years between the time that I made the commitment to build the vessel we now
call Alyria and the beginning of the construction were filled with many
experiences; adventures, mishaps, twists and turns but I always knew why I was
going through all of these experiences and my vision of the dream never left me.
At once I began the process of learning to sail, first in very small boats
and gradually in larger ones. In the beginning I took sailing lessons which
proved very useful. Early on I met a man named Ken Pickard who I ended up
learning a lot about sailing from. Ken and I (and our wives Claire and Lyndia)
did a fair bit of sailing on their 25' Thunderbird sloop, mostly day sails and
a small amount of racing. The thing that I remember most fondly about those days
was how much we laughed together and the unspoken attitude of playfulness and
the feeling that we were doing this for fun, and nothing else.
Sometime during that same first year I heard through a friend that there was an
older gentleman named Robert (Bob) Prothero, (a retired boat builder of some
fame around the Puget Sound) who was planning to start a boat building school in
the area and was looking for a place to locate the school. Naturally I got
excited and began to help with the search for a facility. As soon as that was completed
I enrolled in the very first class of the Northwest School of Wooden Boat building, which Bob founded in Port Townsend, Washington (To learn more
about the present-day school, please click on the name of the school in this
text). It was an amazing experience and I could not have done what I did without
the time spent there. So it seemed that things were going well; I had gained
some valuable boat building experience and my sailing skills were improving
constantly. But there was still something missing: money.
About the same time that I was engaging myself with the study of wooden
boats and sailing, Lyndia was exploring a line of nutritional products and
something else called Network Marketing. While I liked the nutritional products
I could not picture myself involved in Network Marketing and when she announced
that she was starting a Network Marketing business with those same
products, I told her not to expect any help from me. With Lyndia's attitude
about sailing and mine about Network Marketing, it's amazing that we've been
able to work all this out. Needless to say, her attitude about sailing has
changed as has mine about Network Marketing. In fact our business (which we
built together) has not only given us the money and time to build our dream
sailboat (which we built together), but also has given us a residual income so
that we can have a lifestyle that most people only dream of. (To learn more
about our business, click here). After a several year learning curve in Network
Marketing in which we created an on-going income stream, we purchased our first
sailboat. A few years later, we began the actual construction of Alyria. Click
here to see pictures of Alyria's construction.
To be continued
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