One thing that happens when you start making changes in your travel plans is that you start questioning what it is you are doing here in the first place. That might be a bit too sweeping - but it is something that happens to me. People come out here sailing for varying lengths of time, and for different reasons. Some plan to make it a full time life style, others do not. Some are part timers some are full timers. Then there are people like us, who really have no idea how long they plan to stay in this lifestyle. The usual answer you get is "as long as its fun" or "until the money runs out" or "until our health gives out." I always add "until I find myself some place I can't bear to leave." Lots of people stop sailing around when they find that place. A lot of people change to part timers or stop altogether when grand kids come along.
Anyway, I am not giving up this lifestyle anytime soon. But I do sometimes question how I am doing it. Am I working my way around the world? Am I just sort of drifting with no planned just seeing where th current takes us? Is it a matter of seeing as much of a country as I can or do I want to get to know one place really well? How long do I want to spend out traveling with limited personal visits to my family when I know that the further away I get, the more difficult it will be to do that? These are the sort of things I spend time thinking about.
I know that being able to live "without a schedule" is important to me, yet at the same time I am most comfortable with some sort of structure to my days. I want to see the whole world, see everything, but also realize that the world IS as big as "they" say, and I am going to have to have limits somewhere. I like staying places long enough to really get to know them, to see how people live day to day lives, an to meet someone who is not in the service or more accurately the tourist industry if at all possible. That sort of thing means you need to stay put for awhile. So it has been a year here a year there. Some places got skipped for various reasons. I do know this - I can't bring myself to move along every few months. I like the way we are doing it, even if it means it takes us another ten years to get around the world.
The things we are experiencing here in this archipelago are truly wonderful. Yesterday I caught two big fish - a 10 lb sierra and an 8 lb pargo. The pargo will be frozen and we ate half the sierra last night with one of our neighbors (a young guy from Germany single handing his way on a 27 foot boat) and need to eat the other half of it tonight -sierra does not freeze or otherwise keep well. It has to eaten at once. The pargo will freeze nicely. We have enough fish so I have banned fishing until we use what we have. It would just be greedy to keep on going. We are going into Panama City this weekend (leaving Thursday) to restock on groceries and replace one of these dying computers. My list, which I began last week, has grown exponentially since then, but this means we can stay out here for a longer period of time. Being anchored out here in the middle of nowhere has real financial advantages -there is no where to send money even if you wanted to, so the money just sits in the bank. Of course we will take a chunk of that to replace the computer. And something always come up, but as long as we just come into town once a month we can't really go wrong as long as the boat holds together (The big "if" in sailing). And life out here is great. I never get bored, because even just looking around the anchorage is always interesting. The Kindle makes it possible to have an unlimited supply of reading matter, and our solar and (intermittent, it does not work most of the time for unknown reasons) wind power make it possible for us to listen to music or watch movies any time we want to as they generate plenty of power, even when it is not real sunny. Our neighbors here are great - both the "permanent" ones who anchor here for months, and the transients who stop for a few day as they tour the area. We have enough of a social life but not too much. Mike has become more sanguine about the possibility of lightning, remembering that we have good insurance and that having to replace the entire electronic system could have its advantages, especially when it is paid for with insurance. We know that because that is exactly what happened to a friend of ours. But I think that pretty much guarantees that we will not be struck. So we are happy we decided to stay here, even if it does mean that we will likely lose touch with some cruisers we have been with off and on since Mexico. That is sort of sad but it is just what happens when you move around a lot. I want to do things our way, which is not necessarily what all the other cruisers do at any given time. But I also know that any truly meaningful relationship can be maintained across many years and miles. I have the friends to prove that.
So on that note, I will sign off for today. Might be time for a dinghy ride into the mangroves.
"The average newcomer to the ever-growing ranks of yachtsmen comes equipped with only a slight knowledge of rope work and most of it wrong. From his boyhood days in Troop C of the Boy Scouts, he can only remember the clove hitch, the square or reef knot, and the sheepshank. the first will always be useful,the second has but one use, that of turning in a reef, and the sheepshank he will never need if he lives to be one hundred." (Hervey Garrett Smith, "The Marlinspike Sailor")
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