Sailing for a Dream
I met Kenny and Rhonda Thayer many years ago, when I lived near Atlanta and Kenny and I worked together. That was right around the time I bought my first sailboat. In our downtimes at work, Kenny and I had many discussions about the philosophies of life and the world at large. He was one of the few people who understood my “crazy notion to buy a boat.” So I wasn’t all that surprised last year when Rhonda got in touch and told me they were in the market for a sailboat to do some traveling on as well. This is their story.
When they returned home from their vacation, Kenny got online and started reading to develop an understanding of how people managed to travel all over the world on boats. He read stories from Lin and Larry Pardey, well-known in the cruising community, James Baldwin, who twice circumnavigated on a 28foot Pearson Triton sailboat, Sterling Hayden, who walked away from his Hollywood acting career in the 60s and went sailing, and Annie Hill, an English author of multiple books and articles about sailboat voyaging. When he wasn’t reading about the possibilities, he was visiting websites listing boats for sale. He determined early on that a sailboat was the best option financially as the boats were more affordable and would require less overhead in fuel costs. His next step was to convince Rhonda. He’d shared some of the articles with her and she was intrigued, but reserved. “I refused to get excited until I knew for sure he was going to follow through with it, or if this too would pass.” She had reservations. Kenny had come up with great plans in the past, but would lose interest in them. "Usually right about the time I got excited about them," she said. "But as the months went by, his excitement continued to grow as he moved forward with his planning. I finally realized he was serious this time. It was actually safe to get excited, so I jumped aboard with all the plan-making too!" Rhonda had been recently diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and lost her job, but they were still determined to explore the possibilities. The next step was to find a boat – if they were able to do that, then they’d figure out the logistics. Kenny continued looking
By Amy Thurman Photos provided by Kenny & Rhonda Thayer
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hile on vacation in Hawaii in 2013, Kenny and Rhonda Thayer, of Jonesboro, Ga., booked a sunset cruise on a catamaran. As they walked down the dock, they read the names and home ports of boats, marveling at the faraway places. They ended up going on several sunset cruises and one evening, Kenny struck up a conversation with one of the boat owners on the dock. “You sailed that here from Washington State?” Kenny asked. The owner confirmed that he had and at that moment, unbeknownst to Rhonda, an idea began to bloom and a dream was born. "I want to do that," Kenny thought. 14
Southern Tides Magazine
April 2018
