During Christmastime 1980, my brother R, his wife J, some friends, and I traveled down Baja California and back. We traveled rough and cheap in a tiny car we rented in Tijuana. Each evening, having neither the money nor the inclination for hotels, we took our sleeping bags and dispersed out into the desert for the night. One evening, a pair of young and curious coyotes cautiously nuzzled my face; another night, pigs from a nearby farm surrounded me. Each morning, we woke, cooked up coffee and breakfast, and continued our rambles. We hiked through amazing Dr. Seuss forests and up in the high country, watched for birds, whales, and dolphins along the beaches, and stocked up on supplies in the little towns along our route. We spent Christmas Day body-surfing near Cabo San Lucas.

At some point--I think it may have been during a night spent camping and drinking rum on the sandy beach below a volcano--we developed a plan to pool our money and buy a live-aboard sailboat. We would sail around the world, choosing an itinerary that best pleased us, and staying however long we liked when we happened upon a congenial port or island. We would keep our expenses down by fishing, and perhaps we would work from time to time--say, while waiting out hurricane seasons. It seemed a solid plan--we even gave careful thought to the boat's dimensions and layout.

We'd long ago forgotten that plan. But tonight, I stopped by R and J's house to drop off a present for my nephew O, arriving in time to join them in watching a rented DVD of "Pirates of the Caribbean." We watched salt spray fly, swells roll, palm fronds rustle in the wind, and hulls slice through the water. By the end of the movie, I had remembered our old plan.

Hey, I said--remember when we were going to buy that sailboat? R and J did remember. Well, it wouldn't be too late to do that, I pointed out. O agreed to be cabin boy. It seemed a solid and agreeable plan to him. I remembered that our cousin C had sailed with her father to Cuba and back, not so long ago.

Of course, the difference between then and now is that then, we were more than half convinced that we would really buy that boat...