Like a grieving process, I feel there are a lot of mixed emotions when uprooting your life and doing something completely different and out of your comfort zone.
Am I in a state of panic?
I’m not sure, but there is definitely something unsettling inside.
The passage from BVI to Grenada (from where we bought the boat to where we are storing it) was a real eye-opener and during the entire passage, I told Mike that I am sooo glad we didn’t bring the kids with us. It was actually an option we discussed was to jump in with both feet and bring the kids to have a mini adventure before our big one in October.
I remember looking at Mike on day 2 of smashing through waves and telling him ‘this is ridiculous”.
Then our arrival in Grenada had our hopes high again and with the learning curve and labour intensive preparation for haul out….we began to feel a little defeated again.
By the time we were in the taxi en route to the airport to go home, I felt some relief to be leaving the boat and go back home. Then I felt guilty for having relief, then I felt a slight panic to think we have committed ourselves to move aboard, yet right now I just want to go home.
What a mixed bag of emotions.
I have to keep telling myself that things will be different when we go back because we will have the kids with us and will be a family. We will be traveling with the comforts of our floating home and in actual fact, the boat is very comfortable (to live on). We won’t be doing long passages making us uncomfortable.
The bonus of starting in the Caribbean is you don’t need to sail any longer than a day, or so, to get somewhere new.
We will develop a routine.
We will get used to the heat and the humidity and the dampness and the constant wet that you get on a boat.
People ask if it has sunk in yet and I would say no but now, finally, now, it has.
I go between feeling scared and excited but I guess that’s exactly what drives an adventure. This is why we both took a leave of absence from our jobs and are renting our house out (instead of selling).
We are jumping in with both feet, but only into shallow water.
We jumped into the deep end by doing the passage ourselves from BVI to Grenada and I think if we hadn’t experienced that, we would have been in for a rude awakening.
Now, we can mentally prepare for what to expect and allow us to at least put one foot back into our comfort zone.
