Ren and Ashley Chapman with children, Cape and Ani, and boat, Jade, at their home on the Northeast Cape Fear River December 2018.
ALLISON POTTER
a beautiful place right on the Intracoastal Waterway. I
was paying $900 a month for it, with millionaires beside
me to the left and right. My life was good. I just wanted
to travel on a sailboat. That’s the dream, right, to go
from country to country and see things you’ve never seen
before?”
Ashley wasn’t sure exactly what would happen when they
bought the boat.
“We didn’t know if that meant to quit our jobs, sell out,
and sail out,” she says. “I didn’t think it was going to be
that intense.”
Life moved on, the goal remained on the whiteboard
above a door, never erased, always there. They could see it
every day. Buy a boat.
“We didn’t work toward that goal,” Ashley says. “The
boat was just a dream.”
A couple of things happened to put wind into the dream.
Ren met some guys who spearfished via freediving.
“I was like man, if we’re going to spearfish, this is the
way to do it,” he says. “Spearfishing while scuba diving is
almost like cheating a bit. It doesn’t seem right. So I started
trying to freedive and spearfish.”
37
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM