Culatra

Culatra the perfect chill-out zone for dreamers and doers.

 So we are sitting in this lovely anchorage surrounded by boats many of which we know waiting for the high spring tide on Friday so we can be lifted out of the water.  We came a little early because with “Squeak” on board we didn’t want to risk an awfully lumpy passage if the weather wouldn’t play but while we need  a decent high tide to be lifted out we also need a nice and low tide to make it under the low bridge at Vila Real de Santo Antonio with our 23M mast. So we have a few days or R&R and pottering, before the work begins and what better place to do it, than Culatra.

 Culatra  a unique place seen  by many  sailors as the “chillout zone”. A place to spend your summer, away from the ferocious inland heat with the sea breeze to keep you cool, clear water  to swim in and long sandy beaches to stroll along and collect seashells.  Then retire to one of the islands bars for a sun-downer, where if you speak just a little of the lingo you’ll be made to feel like one of the locals who has lived there all their lives.  It’s the perfect place to kick back and do nothing all summer long.  

To many this is the perfect life that everyone dreams of, especially those on the 9-5 daily grind working for the ‘man’ with no end in sight.   But how do they do it without going out of their tiny minds?   To spend my summers with so little to do seems like both a torture and a waste.  Sure I dream of moments, like the night-watches  on passage when I am all alone in the darkness with nothing for miles around me but water and starry skies. Then I have time and space to plough through all the books on my reading list that I never seem to find time for in our everyday full tilt life or simply to  sit and contemplate things .  Just passing time doesn’t do it for me though, and fortunately not ‘him’ either. In that regard we are the perfect match.

I believe there are two kinds of people in life; ‘doers’ and ‘thinkers’.   We are doers.  I don’t wish to downgrade thinkers. Some of them, are the  creators  or inventors of new ideas, and the world would not be evolving without them.  Some are just the dreamers of dreams however, and their life’s ambitions, sadly will only ever be, lost dreams.  We are busy turning our dreams into reality.  I have often said I would be happy to die anytime.  I don’t mean that in a morbid fatalistic sense, I don’t want to die, at least not yet.  It’s simply that if I had tried to cram any more into the life I have already had, there wasn’t time.  And I’m going to keep living my life that way!

Yesterday this popped up on my facebook feed and I reposted it on my timeline.  Sure I still have a pretty big bucket list and I hope I manage to do most of it but if not, I’m more than happy with what I’ve achieved.  There is so much out there though, so many possibilities that I find I am now picky and  hard to please.  One white sandy sunkissed beach with palm trees and crystal clear water is a lot like another to me.  There needs to be more to keep interested, thinking  and  building those knowledge banks. I don’t want to be the ‘doer’ that rushes impulsively from one thing to the next without thinking . I want to be the best of both, the intelligent doer who can      apply what they have learned  to making their dreams come true.  

In the meantime – more doing and less dreaming as off to the boatyard we go.