Overwhelmed

For some reason, most people have a misguided conception of what it's like to live on a boat and take off to sail around the world. Romantic is the word that comes to mind. It's all coconuts, palm trees, and white sandy beaches. What most people don't think about is how hard it is to make the romantic white sandy beaches and foo foo drinks become a reality.

As I sit down to write this bit of nonsense, we have officially been on permanent vacation for 2 years, one month, 4 days, 17 hours, and 18 minutes, but who's counting? In these last couple of years, other than time spent on a family medical emergency, we have been full time adventurers. We have gone wherever our heart desired, we have done whatever we have wanted, and we have seen more things than we could have ever imagined. In all of that, we have had a 99% stress free life. The other 1% has been devoted to the stress of figuring out what we are going to do tomorrow.

To some of you, that 1% stress rate may seem like no big deal. You may be saying to yourself right now that we are a couple of weenies for even thinking that trying to figure out what tomorrow's activities are going to be could even be called stress. It's really only stressful to us because we really want to see and do everything that is humanly possible, and sometimes, we realize that no matter how hard we try, everything that is out there is just not humanly possible for us to see and do. Sometimes there are too many options and we have a hard time figuring out which of those options is best. I know, I know, it's a rough life.

If we back up to about 2 ½ years ago, back when we were scrambling to get ready to leave everything behind and sail off into the sunset, our stress level was through the roof. As romantic as it sounds to get rid of everything and sail off into the sunset, it's not an easy thing to do. It's completely and utterly insane. Not only do you have to figure out how to get rid of everything you own, but you have to say goodbye to family and friends, quit your job (that's the easy part...because working sucks), make sure your boat is ready to sail over the horizon, figure out how you are going to live without an income, and then the hardest part, actually leaving. Each of those things may seem like no big deal when you take them on one by one, but pile them on top of each other and it can get overwhelming for even the best of us.

We had been planning on having this adventure for years so you would think that when the time came for us to leave, we would have been ready. You would be wrong for thinking that. I guess we were theoretically ready to leave because my mind was already out the door 6 months before we left, but physically speaking, we weren't even close to being as ready as you might have thought we were. As hard as we had worked to get out the door, lots of things were left undone because at some point, you just have to say “screw it”...and leave.

The biggest part of not being ready wasn't the huge list of boat work that we needed to accomplish (we still haven't finished it all 2 years later), but rather the mental anguish of trying to figure out if what we were doing actually made sense. From a young age, we are trained to grow up, go to college, get married, push out a boat load of kids, buy a mini van, get a dog, buy a big house with a white picket fence, send those ungrateful kids to college, work till we are at least 65 so we can afford the big house with the picket fence, have a couple of years to enjoy ourselves in retirement, and then drop dead from either cancer or a heart attack. Ignoring all the training and leaving everything behind may sound like a no brainer if you are neck deep in the daily grind, but if you really think about it, could you actually drop everything, leave family and friends, buy a boat, and take on the mighty and unruly oceans in search of freedom and adventure? My guess is that the vast majority of people couldn't, otherwise there would be a whole lot more boats sailing around the world.

We aren't the first people to attempt this endeavor and we won't be the last. And just because we left a couple of years ago, that doesn't make us tougher, smarter, or better than you. It probably just makes us crazier. Both Brenda and I have an undeniable desire to explore and we wouldn't feel satisfied with our lives if we didn't at least take the chance and try to see the world while our minds and bodies are still able. But having said that, it was still not an easy decision to ignore the years of training, forget about the big house and fancy cars, and leave.

The very first day of our trip is still one of the most vivid memories I have. We left on May 31, 2014 at 7 am. I untied the dock lines, backed the boat out of our mooring, and headed to sea with the intention of sailing up the Inside Passage to Alaska and spending the first summer of our new life exploring the waterways of the great Pacific Northwest before setting sail for the rest of the world. Just as we left the marina and pointed the boat north, I had the most invigorating feeling of freedom that I have ever had. I instantly felt alive with possibility. I knew that we could go anywhere in the world we wanted and we didn't have any time we needed to be anywhere. It was magical. I felt weightless.

But the funny thing is that the day before I felt weightless, actually the entire few months before, I was a mental wreck with a discernible weight strapped to my shoulders. I was stressed to my wits end. It seemed we were scrambling frantically for so long, we had lost all sense and sensibility. We were just going through the motions, trying to get everything completed that we could muster, just so we could leave. We had a planned day to leave and we were leaving. Nothing was going to stop us. So we left.

One of the big reasons that we were able to say “screw it” and just leave, was the fact that even though we had planned on “sailing around the world”, we knew that we weren't actually leaving to sail around the world for a while. We had a plan to take the first few months of our adventure sailing the Inside Passage, then spend the rest of the year having a big road road trip around the United States. We knew that we were going to be on our home turf for another year before we left our country for good and actually set sail for distant shores. Well, that one year has turned into 2, and now we are facing the same feelings of apprehension that we did before we left the first time.

For some reason, sailing to Mexico is a big deal for us. It has brought our stress level up to a point that we haven't seen in a little over two years. Don't get me wrong, we are incredibly excited. Again, we have an insatiable desire to explore. But it still doesn't change the fact that we are leaving our backyard and going out to take on the world and her mighty oceans in search of freedom and adventure. It just goes against all of our training that is telling us to go back to work, get the big house and fancy cars, and live a “normal” life.

The other part of the stress is the mile long list of boat projects that we were able to put off for the last 2 years. It seems that completing the list is more important now that we are going to be leaving our home country, where parts are easily accessible, and we will soon be faced with the urgency of self sufficiency. There are no stores in the middle of the ocean. If things aren't working out there, no one is going to come fix it for us. We need everything to be in tip top shape, we need piles of spare parts, and we need spare parts for our spare parts. It's a daunting list.

The other big part of our apprehension is the fact that we still don't have a mast for our sailboat. Even though we ordered a new mast over 6 months ago, it's still not here. When I talk to the mast manufacturer, I get the same answer as the last time we talked. “It's almost done. It should ship next week.” Pretty soon we will run out of next weeks.

We are however carrying on like the mast will show up next week and have the boat in complete disarray as we tear into maintenance, projects, and figuring out where we are going to stow all of our spare parts. We are having our life raft serviced (just in case), checking all of our safety equipment, and Brenda has been going through our giant medical kit to make sure everything is in order (no doctors in the middle of the ocean either...we have the supplies to cut out your appendix and stitch you back up if anyone needs it done).

Yesterday, as we were working on the boat, we caught each other staring vacantly into space. Each of us with a dumbfounded and defeated look on our faces, not sure of what to do next. Usually when I get to a place when I can't seem to figure out what to do next, I can break myself out of my stupor by looking at my mile long list of things to do. By reading through my list, I can for some reason get back on track and prioritize what my next task should be. It's kind of amazing because I've read the list about 400 times by now and I know exactly what it says on it, but if I take a few minutes and re-read it, I can usually figure out what to do. Not yesterday. By the end of the day, we were both fried. Even re-reading my list couldn't get me going again. Overwhelmed is the world that comes to mind.

So today, we drove down to Seattle and had lunch with some good friends who will also be sailing to Mexico around the same time as us this summer. And what do you know, they are just as overwhelmed we are. It's sometimes reassuring to be with company that is just as much of a wreck as we are.

I'm including these 2 photos not because the boat is back in the water, but as a reminder to me of what we are working for.  The first photo is of our boat at the end of day one of our adventure over 2 years ago.  She was in total disarray, but we left, sailed 8 hours north, and anchored next to Hope Island near Deception Pass.  It was a good day.  The second photo is from a few days later, after we got the boat a little bit more put together, and at Orcas Island in the San Juan's.  You may notice that in both of these photos, our boat has a big metal pole sticking out of it.  What I wouldn't give for a mast now.  And if you can find our boat in the second photo, you get a gold star.  

May 31, 2014.  Anchored at the end of day one, over 2 years ago.

Just a couple of days later in the San Juan Islands.