John Jaso walked away from Major League Baseball at 34, potentially leaving millions of dollars on the table. The sea was calling.

Jaso’s baseball journey was never quite as good a fit. Tampa Bay selected him in the 12th round of the 2003 draft, and he made it to the majors near the end of the 2008 season. In his nine-year career, he was traded three times and switched to first base from catcher after sustaining multiple concussions. But he had plenty of highlights too: He caught Félix Hernández’s 2012 perfect game for the Seattle Mariners — there hasn’t been one in M.L.B. since — and hit for the first cycle in PNC Park history when he was with Pittsburgh in 2016. His long dreadlocks toward the end of his career made him almost instantly recognizable. And he pulled in career earnings of more than $17 million, according to Spotrac.

But he found the M.L.B. life to be unfulfilling in some unexpected ways. “Baseball set me up for life,” he said. “I love it, and I respect it. But it was part of this culture of consumerism and overconsumption that began to weigh really heavily on me. Even when I retired, people said: ‘You might be walking away from millions of dollars!’ But I’d already made millions of dollars. Why do we always have to have more, more, more?”

Boating filled the void in his life. He familiarized himself with every foot of the ship. He took a class for diesel motor mechanics and installed solar panels and a wind generator. He devoured hours of YouTube videos about the electronics and made sure he knew what every wire did. “If anything goes wrong in the open ocean,” he said, “I’m the only one out there to fix it.”

All that was left to do: Learn how to sail.