When opportunity knocks

They say opportunity may not knock twice – so it may be a recommendation to open the door the first time and invite in the unknown to change something in your life.

The first time I encountered such an opportune knock was when a handsome seasoned sailor asked me to marry him and offered me a trip with my two children around the world – aboard a 30 ft double-ender yacht. At first I refused for various reasons and with an obvious pang of regret.

A good  friend however urged me to accept, as ‘proposals such as these do not happen too often in a life time’.  And so I did marry the sailor and set off from Cape Town across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean. The crossing seemed never ending, I home-schooled my young children and wrote a comprehensive logbook but eventually gave up on the dream of reaching that idyllic Pacific island returning…