SHIP'S LOG:
Another terrible day - weather wise - just more of the same old weather. I actually thought maybe there might be a change and I was right, it did get a little hotter.
A couple of nights ago, the wind shifted late at night and I became uneasy about the anchorage and the holding and it all led me to get up and check things out. I Didn't turn on the GPS but simple went into the cockpit, check the anchor and its setting and basically waited for the wind to died down. IT was only a couple of hours until dawn and everything seems better in the light. I supposed that I could have gone back to bed but some sense got me up and I decided to go with it. I had a couple of cups of coffee and some cookies and just enjoyed the morning . . . .that was until I took a good look at my watch. When I first looked at it, it had read 4:47 so it didn't seem to be that big a deal to get up a couple of hours early. However, when my watch is in the "Stop Watch Mode", it runs through the weekdays to count of seconds so that you know it is running. I noticed after two hours that it was doing that and so I hit the "STOP" button, reset the mode to time and it read 2:25AM. I had been using the stopwatch mode to time an engine run for a battery charge and simply forgot to turn it off and reset it to time.And with two cups of coffee, I wasn't going back to sleep any time soon.
Today(Saturday) the cruisers gathered at the Miami Yacht Club Bar and had lunch and a few drinks and told stories of trip and cruises. Jim all the came all the way down from Maine in A Bristol 35. It is more amazing that he had a stroke several years ago and still has significant impairment on his left side, but like me, he is all by himself. Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice,of the Catamaran "ZYDATROPE" are friends who have been cruising for years. They bought the catamaran together and couple has their own hull.They say that the only time it gets a bit difficult is when they argue over where to go next. They can't split up, obviously, but they say the disagreements rarely last long or get really heated. Bob and Edith, a British couple in from the the Bahamas, were quite elderly, both in their mid to late 70's but regularly "beat the dragon" - cross the Gulf Stream - between the Bahamas and Florida and they have been doing it for over 30 years. Edith says it keeps them out of their kids' hair and out of nursing homes.
There were about 30 cruisers in all and most had been into the lifestyle for several years at least and couldn't think of ever leaving it. Once you get into the mindset, once you simplify your life to live on a boat, once you let go of all of the stuff that ties you to the land, they say that your really never want to go back. It is something like a long restful vacation, where you wind down and slow down and change all your perspectives. When you have a vacation like that, you get back home and everyone else seems to be running around furiously and worrying about so many thing s that they haven't got time to smell the roses. If you have had a vacation like that, you can begin to understand. Living aboard and the cruising lifestyle is NOT a vacation, it is just a different style of living. It has as many problems as any other lifestyle, just different and you work out the solutions in different ways. You certainly have a much more control of things, at least somethings, and things you worry about and have to deal with are not always the same as others have to deal with - when was the last time you wondered what the make up and consistency of the ground under your house way, or whether the winds would shift at night and blow stronger or be concerned that pipes in the septic system might be leaking so it would be a good thing to check them all out. I know that a lot of people think that this trip is one long vacation. It certainly has aspects of that in it all right, but it is much more a journey of self-discovery and even if everything goes completely wrong, that journey will always be a good one if the one making it takes the time to come to know themselves.
It is two days and two weeks until Turn-Around-Day on the Ides of March. You want to get that weather mess all sorted out up there please?
I think a good reflection should show change over time. Clearly life on the water calls for a quality of care in a much more ongoing way that is different than not painting the house this week instead of next. Smaller things make bigger problems, and more quickly too. But all in all that steep learning curve you have been climbing has probably taught you what you most need to know and likely your sojourn north will be made up of fewer discoveries of what time it isn't; hope springs eternal they say (just who they are is an open question).
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