Have you ever wondered what it would be like to free yourself of your attachment to home, possessions, and an unfulfilling career to follow your dream? Michelle and Paul Caffrey did just that when they sold or gave away virtually everything they owned to buy a converted 1906 Dutch barge, Imagine.
Learn how an idea from a show aired on PBS, Barging through France, grows to become their dream. Through a hands-on training course, they try out the concept – and love it. They decide to make the leap while in their fifties and fit enough to handle a 70-ton, 80 foot long steel boat.
Michelle and Paul “barge shop” for a week in France and Holland, negotiate the purchase, and arrange the refitting of the boat. Within three months, all of their possessions are sold, they’ve quit their jobs and the final inspection of the boat is completed. Paul contracts the work at a shipyard that will be necessary to bring the barge to their specifications and the yard assures him that the work will be finished when the couple arrives.
It isn’t.
Realizing that they will be much longer in Holland than they’d originally planned, Michelle and Paul move into a little-used basement apartment at the shipyard and participate in the remodel. Finally on the water, they travel through Holland and Belgium to France as they face the challenges of difficult locks, bad advice and the rainiest weather in forty years.
Then after traveling for just two weeks, Imagine suffers a serious breakdown. They limp the boat into the tiny village of Chateau Regnault in the Ardennes region of northern France. Here, they find a single cafe, one small food store and a post office where the woman behind the counter explains that no one in the town speaks any English. The repairmen from the nearest garage won’t come to the boat, so armed with high school French and a mechanical background, Paul attempts to repair the problem himself – with frustrating and sometimes hilarious results. An entrepreneurial taxi driver and a fellow boater come to the rescue.
The journey and adventure continue as people join them aboard as they make their way further south to Burgundy and their homeport, St. Symphorien-sur-Saône. They meet new retirees who are having a difficult time adjusting to the slower pace of boating, local characters from tiny villages who are aware of the latest American presidential scandals, lockkeepers who are being phased-out due to automation, and hear of a crazed commercial barge captain who is out to ram the pleasure boaters who are using “his” canals. Along the way, they learn about their new second home, France, and discover more about themselves as individuals and as a couple.
Imagine is named for John Lennon’s song and its message of world peace - and for imagining the possibilities in life that could be yours if you’re willing to take a risk.
