Dorm life

Room number two.
It's midnight and Jodi has her reading light on illuminating the pages of the Marathon Book she is feverishly devouring before her race on Sunday. I am on the bunk pushed up against the other wall trying to get in a few more multiple choice questions.
It was: d)One prolonged and two short blasts
Damn.
A whisper of French is slipping under door number one. Nadia has the room to herself, a little space after her last ill fated job, but offers her tea and healthy eating tips and yacht horror stories in her elegant French-British English accent.
Tracy just arrived back after a month long charter and tells of leaving South Africa and a successful career because of a quote by Mark Twain, which she recited by heart:
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
How many sailors have a yellowed scrap of paper with that scribbled quote tucked into a Lin and Larry Pardey book on their boat?
I was hesitant to stay at a crew house. Usually they are full of drunk 20 year old foreign nationals on gap year dockwalking their way onto yachts. Which isn't a bad way to be. More American kids should try it.
But at 32 with a thick book of questions and the proclivity for stiffer hangovers than when I was young, I was ecstatic to find a crew house with a girls side full of... women.
30 and over, we are all looking for jobs.
30 and over, we are all craving something different.
30 and over, we all bring something to the table.
Yet in this mature household, I am feeling like I am in college again. In a dorm with Susie and Fanny, talking about life and boys and studies and dreams.
Only now we don't need a fake ID.
And we talk about which nutritional supplements we are drinking instead of what liquor.