I’m sitting here at anchor on a calm and perfect late fall morning in Sarah’s Creek, Gloucester Point, VA. The jib is up and unrolled to dry as still and silent as if it were a sheet of steel. Nothing is to be heard except the calls of birds and the ringing in my ears that is the constant reminder of my summer cutting up aluminum plates with a 5 hp Skill Saw in Paul Luke’s boatyard without ear protection. The good old days weren’t always that good.
Many of these posts have been about the things that eventually face all full time cruisers, medical emergencies, major system failures, and the legal complexities of living off the grid in what is rapidly becoming a police state. Now, I get to write about another, the sudden and unplanned hauling and storage of the vessel that has been your home.
It is a morning full of the complexity and contradictions of life. As soon as the early morning sun has done its work, hopefully before a breeze comes up, I will take the first step in disassembling and putting away my home of the last two and a half years which has slid her keel over 6480 nautical miles of water since this forum began. It is bittersweet but time also hangs heavy as over a week until I get off the train to see Dreameagle’s smile seems to stretch as far as the distant smudge of land on the horizon does when spray is flying and I am bucking into twenty knot wind and foul tide. I am leaving all that has become normal to me but look forward to life ashore even more eagerly than I did this voyage.
I know that I will be returning to Strider and there will be sailing and cruising adventures to come but they will be different. I began saying that I was going to do this until someone had to come and carry me off the boat. The experience of that mental space was essential to the spiritual and emotional quest of this adventure but I have learned its lessons and grown. There is much more I want to do in the life that remains than move the boat and have the view constantly changing. As I’ve said so often, the essence of cruising is being able to change your mind.
Many of these posts have been about the things that eventually face all full time cruisers, medical emergencies, major system failures, and the legal complexities of living off the grid in what is rapidly becoming a police state. Now, I get to write about another, the sudden and unplanned hauling and storage of the vessel that has been your home.
It is a morning full of the complexity and contradictions of life. As soon as the early morning sun has done its work, hopefully before a breeze comes up, I will take the first step in disassembling and putting away my home of the last two and a half years which has slid her keel over 6480 nautical miles of water since this forum began. It is bittersweet but time also hangs heavy as over a week until I get off the train to see Dreameagle’s smile seems to stretch as far as the distant smudge of land on the horizon does when spray is flying and I am bucking into twenty knot wind and foul tide. I am leaving all that has become normal to me but look forward to life ashore even more eagerly than I did this voyage.
I know that I will be returning to Strider and there will be sailing and cruising adventures to come but they will be different. I began saying that I was going to do this until someone had to come and carry me off the boat. The experience of that mental space was essential to the spiritual and emotional quest of this adventure but I have learned its lessons and grown. There is much more I want to do in the life that remains than move the boat and have the view constantly changing. As I’ve said so often, the essence of cruising is being able to change your mind.
