The fated moment is finally upon us! It’s time to pull hook and set our sails for foreign waters! It’s been great Uh’merica, and thanks for all the free shipping, but BON VOYAGE! That’s right, you got it Champagne is ready to go. She finally caught up to the status of her crew, who have been lusting for this moment since they acquired her just under two years ago. After returning from our Solar Synergy Ceremony in Oregon we figured about a month or so of gathering spare parts, filling the boat with food, and installing a navigation system would have us ready to leave.
Turns out we needed two months of ten-hour days to basically retouch almost every system aboard. Perhaps I was a bit overly-ambitious and took a little too-much advantage of living in the land-of-cheap-and-plenty to replace, refit, and have spares for just about every moving part on the boat, but there’s a common saying among those that do it that cruising is nothing more than working on your boat in exotic locations.
So I’ve remained as committed as possible to reducing the statistical reality of a breakdown to as favorable a number as possible. That way, if and when the raw water pump seizes down-island, or the mainsail blows a seam after a 24-hour pounding into weather, we will have the materials necessary to manifest our own repairs. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as prepared for any departure as I do now.
That said, Champagne has certainly felt like our spoiled little daughter over these past two months, getting just about anything she wanted. But considering that she will provide our home and transport across one of the most inhospitable environments on the planet for the entirety of the foreseeable future, we—or at least I—remain fervently optimistic that the money was well spent…even if now we don’t have much more of it to spend along the way. After all, what is the value of having twenty extra bucks in your pocket when you’re drifting out to sea because the outboard engine on your dinghy won’t start due to the contaminated fuel that is now gumming up your carburetor because you were too cheap to spring for a couple extra filters? Or at least that is the point you try to convey to the love of your life when you return home with a wallet full of receipts instead of cash. “Remember honey,” you assure her with the same line you have to use with the parents, “it’s for our safety.”
Meanwhile, she hasn’t been taken out for a decent meal, nor had much more than a single night in a hotel for a honeymoon since the two of you were married just two months ago, and is therefore perhaps a bit rightfully jealous of all the lavish attention and spending being poured out upon an inanimate object. But if she can just hold out for a little bit longer, all of that will change, the two of you will embark on thee trip-of-a-lifetime, and it will include more lazy-day palmed-treed white-sand beaches than every glossy-paged honeymoon resort brochure combined. Don’t go there, don’t think I love the boat more than you just because I spend nearly all of my waking hours and hard-earned cash obsessed with providing for her every need…oh shit, this does look bad! Just hang in there honey, we’re almost there, you gotta believe me! By the way, can I have another hundred bucks from your secret Australian savings?…we can’t possibly leave without this cool new tool!
Fortunately my wife has a high level of tolerance and although she doesn’t always see the big-picture, her frame is consistently widening. As a bonus, she’s good at finding all sorts of nooks and crannies capable of holding food stores, and so even if the money does run out at least we won’t go hungry! Additionally, she is an excellent public relations manager…actually, if you are reading this you are probably far more aware of her PR skills than I am. I just do the writing, she figures out how to get it on your screen.
That said, we are finally joining the ranks of the rest of our generation and will soon be posting the innards of our private lives on the most public network available…that’s right, we are launching a website! Soon enough, rather than receiving these old-fashioned and clunky emails you will be able to follow our journey via a proper blog. In addition, I’m sure there will be Facebook yearbooks and Instagram snap chats and all sorts of tweety bird postcards that will more or less share the same stories, but you’ll have to stay tuned until our senior PR rep has everything in place.
Just yesterday we emptied our lockers and I signed my truck, Abigail, over to a local friend who will continue her tradition as a Keys-only Cruiser. We have one last package to receive and some final sorting to arrange on the boat, but we took her out for a little shakedown the other day and all seems well-enough.
If we’re lucky, we’ll actually have one day to sit around and do nothing while we wait for the wind to shift around to the SE early next week for our Bahama-bound initial destination. It’s back to that island nation so we can escape from Trump-mania, reacquaint ourselves with the tasks required of a boat that actually moves, and decompress from the gluttonous slog that has been our life these past two months. But don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining in the least, especially not today of all days, our last American holiday for the foreseeable future. I am so thankful for my wife, for this blessed life we live, and for our upcoming life on the water. HAPPY THANKSGIVING to you all!
