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Making Friends With Uncertainty

Oct 1st, 2012
by Sara.
12 comments

Family and friends keep asking what is next for us, when this jaunt across the Pacific comes to a halt in New Zealand sometime in the coming weeks. We keep saying we don’t know, which is exactly true.

Right now, there are a few things we know for sure however:

  1. Cyclone season is upon us soon and it’s time to get out of the way
  2. We are really, really, really anxious for a draft IPA, jeans, a hike in the woods, and a real supermarket
  3. Our cruising kitty is down to its final dregs and it’s time to go back to work for a while

For a couple of people who like to have at least the next few years of our life mapped out, that’s not much of a chart.

We have far more questions than answers: will we be able to find work in New Zealand and then get the proper visas? Will we like NZ enough to want to stay for a few years? Forever? Will NZ like us? What city will we be living in? How is Leah going to adjust to regular school after a year of free-roaming school? How will we adjust to wearing socks again? Having cell phones? Having bills? Will we want to return to the Northwest and if so do we want to sail back or sell the boat and fly ourselves home? If we sail back, can we swing by Mexico? (I really really want a taco.)

We’ve been around long enough to know that the answers to these questions will be sorted out in time. Decisions will be made for us, things will happen. And we’ll have to make some tough decisions, too. We haven’t always been comfortable with so much ambiguity about the future; in fact, a few years ago we would have been a nervous wreck with so much uncertainty ahead. But now it feels rather invigorating, exciting even, at the unknown adventure that lies ahead, still.

Maybe it’s because we’re getting older and hopefully a little wiser. But I like to think that cruising has shown us how to be flexible, to go into the unknown without expectation and with an openness for whatever happens next. Most importantly, having faith that everything will turn out all right.

There is another thing we know and it actually surprises us a little, after being so positive a few months ago that we’d have had our fill of sailing after all these miles. We’ve been here in Tonga, spending a lot of time looking back over the past 16 months kind of disbelieving that we are practically at the end of this journey already. We’ve enjoyed the introspection that comes with being perched on the brink of the unknown. I thought for sure I’d be done with this ocean sailing traveling thing by the time we got here. But our quiet time in Tonga, with so much more of the world to see (Fiji! Vanuatu! Thailand!) just over the horizon has shown us that we haven’t got our fill at all.

Maybe what little we do know for certain is enough: that with a few more coins in our pocket, we could keep going and going and going.

The most difficult month

May 31st, 2011
by Sara.
11 comments

We have exactly one month to go before we untie the docklines and head north from Olympia. Sleep has gotten more difficult, the lists of things to do and buy and fix are checked multiple times daily. We grow more and more nervous about how our lives will look 30 short days from now. We are still excited but these last few weeks are beyond stressful. Wine helps.

It feels like I have a million things to do, buy, organize. I press “Two-Day 1 Click” multiple times each day on Amazon.com as I stock up on coffee filters, homeschool books, rechargeable batteries. It will be infinitely more difficult to get, well, stuff, when our car is sold three weeks from now. Mail order will pretty much cease at the end of this month as we won’t be staying in any one place more than a few days in our quest to travel around Vancouver Island by the end of August. Check, check, add another item, check….

In reality though we are ready to go. Only three things keep us at the dock other than Leah’s last day of preschool in mid-June:

  1. Moving our things from our larger storage unit to the cheaper, smaller out-of-town unit
  2. Hauling Wondertime in mid-June to paint her terribly overgrown bottom.

Make that two things. I feel better already.

Our departure date is hurtling towards us. At this point we’ll get what we can get done but whatever doesn’t will happen underway. We know this, we’ve done this crazy race to the end twice before. We know we’ll leave no matter what and it’s never mattered before what was still on the list when we threw the lines on board. Some nights through, we collapse, exhausted, at trying to chink away at our lists and take care of our two busy girls (the youngest of which is going through her 2 ½ year disequilibrium with full force. Which can be pretty cute. But still…).

That is when we grab a guidebook off the shelf and start reading, again, about the places we’ll be traveling to. In 30 days. We talk about route plans, anchorages we don’t want to miss, friends to stop and see along the way. We forget about the lists for an hour or two and remember why we are doing all this in the first place.

Plans that last until morning

Jan 31st, 2011
by Sara.
3 comments

It’s happened before.

Late night stars, a handful of sailing friends, a few glasses of wine/margaritas/tequila shots/beers (although not all of these at once, of course). We talk and laugh and reminisce about past cruising memories. And then: plans are made.

One night way back in Mexico, late night plans developed in this way. During an evening of jovial fun, our fellow South Pacific-bound friends were trying their hardest to convince us to follow along in our Alberg 35, Pelican. We fought back with many excuses: we had only several months’ worth of funds left in our cruising kitty, our 30-year-old sails were on their last legs thanks to the Mexican sun, we didn’t have a liferaft. But then, as the night wore on, they began to win us over. Weakened with lukewarm but powerful margaritas made with Jumex and Jose Cuervo Especial we began to think that it might be a good idea. That we could indeed survive six months of crystal blue waters, white sand and palm trees. By the time we’d piled our drink glasses in the sink and got into our dinghy to putt back to Pelican for the night, we were headed for the South Pacific with the rest of the fleet.

And then we woke up the next morning. Bleary-eyed, with a pounding headache, we tried to remember what we’d promised the night before. We drank our tea in the morning sun looking out over the calm waters of Tenacatita Bay and knew that it just wasn’t going to happen. Someday. But not that year, despite how sure we were the night before of our upcoming South Pacific adventure. Some plans made in the night just do not last through to the next morning.

This past weekend, it happened again. Late night, a few beers, good friends. We were talking about our Northwest cruising plans for this summer. We had said that we really wanted to visit Princess Louisa again, if nothing else.

“Princess Louisa. Hmmm….” Our friend Karisa said. “But have you guys been to Blackfish Sound up north? That just blows Princess Louisa away. It’s beautiful and there’s hardly anyone there even mid-summer.” Yes, yes, that is true we agreed. We had been through there a handful of times, usually just quickly passing through. Nearby Kwatsi Bay had been one of our favorite anchorages ever. “And have you been on the West Coast of Vanvouver Island? It is just spectacular.” No, we had not. We’d explored the Northwest coast all the way up to Juneau, Alaska and back but not the West Coast of Vancouver Island.

“We’d like to do that, but we just aren’t sure we have enough time.” There we go making excuses again, to not complete one of our long-held cruising dreams.

“How much time do you have?” Karisa asks.

“About six weeks we figure.”

“Plenty of time,” she declares.

The conversation continues on into the night. We admit that we really don’t feel right leaving the Northwest without having circumnavigated Vancouver Island. The West coast of the island is desolate and achingly beautiful and rugged. And we do have plenty of time. And it would be a perfect shakedown cruise for Wondertime and her crew. It doesn’t take long before the decision is made: we’re going to go around Vancouver Island this summer.

The next morning we wake up (no headache this time, we’re not as young as we used to be and no tequila was consumed). Almost right away we talk again about our plans. Excited. We’re going around the island.

Because the plans that last until morning are the ones that are real. The ones that happen.

This Year.

Jan 1st, 2011
by Sara.
5 comments
The Wondertime Crew

Happy New Year from the crew of s/v Wondertime!

Michael and I woke up this New Year’s morning in our cozy bunk aboard Wondertime to bright winter sunshine streaming through the portholes. It was freezing cold outside our deep fluffy down comforter as we usually keep the heaters around 65°F as we sleep and it was a mere 18°F outside, but we had smiles on our faces anyway.

“We’re going cruising this year.” I told him with an excited grin.

“We sure are!” he replied.

I can’t remember ever waking up on a New Year’s morning with the distinct feeling that it was indeed a fresh, new year. With a sense of excitement and a butterfly in my belly at all that the year ahead held for us. Knowing that this is The Year we’ve been dreaming about for so long. And it’s arrived.

Almost eight years ago we unloaded our sweet Alberg 35 from the semi truck that had brought her back to Seattle from San Carlos after our year sailing to and around Mexico together. We hadn’t even got her back in the water and we knew that we absolutely had to get back out there again…someday. We figured another year or two of working and we’d have enough to spend another year cruising. Then Leah came along a few years later and we started making plans to leave when she was two, except that Holly was born that year. When Holly was three months old we decided that we’d leave when she was four…. But we couldn’t wait that long it turned out. We sold our house, bought Wondertime, and the decision was made to leave in two years, in 2011.

One year later we officially made Wondertime our home. Now, having lived onboard for nearly six months, we welcomed 2011 with joy aboard our cozy floating home. The girls drank sparking juice and Michael and I toasted with something a little kickier. It was a nice quiet New Year’s Eve at home with our small family.

And this morning we woke up to 2011, to six more months before we untie the docklines in Olympia for good, to sunshine, to a new year. To giddy excitement.

Although the sparkling cider we’d put out in the cockpit to chill last night is now frozen solid and the boat is nearly frozen into our slip, the clear blue sky we could see through the hatch above our bunk felt like Spring, even though it is still months away. We will have many more dark rainy days this season and there is still much work to do, but now our vision is no longer a dream. It’s our life.

May you also find your dream in 2011. And live it.