Garrett flew to Nicaragua yesterday. He has gone back to Thisldu, the 35-foot 41-year-old sailboat we left behind in the wake of the pandemic.

For those of you that are new to our story or just need a recap: Garrett and I left San Francisco on October 2, 2019, and sailed to Nicaragua. We spent one month cruising the California coast, four months cruising Pacific Mexico, and two months docked in Nicaragua before flying back to the United States by way of a repatriation flight on May 20, 2020. It was our intention to sail from San Francisco to Panama before the hurricane season started in May, but when we arrived in Nicaragua on March 13, Covid-19 had taken the world by storm and stopped us in our tracks.

If you’re looking for more details on that chapter of our lives, take a look at my cruising logs and the below posts about our time in Nicaragua and how we came to be in Charleston.

Cruising Central America: How We’re Impacted by the Coronavirus Pandemic (published March 14, 2020)

Update to Our Cruising Plans: Coronavirus Edition (published April 25, 2020)

FAQ: Clarifications to Our Cruising and Coronavirus Situation (published May 2, 2020)

Homecoming (published May 21, 2020)

From Sea to Land: Why We Are Where We Are Today (published August 9, 2020)

It’s hard to believe that six months has passed since we last set foot on Thisldu. Hard to grasp all that has happened since then. But that isn’t what this post is about. Today, I want to focus on what is happening now.

Garrett flew to Miami this past Thursday, and continued on to Managua, Nicaragua on Saturday. The only flights going into Nicaragua right now are out of Miami or Mexico on Avianca Airlines, and Garrett went down two days early so he could visit with his brother and not feel rushed in the connection. To be able to fly, Garrett had to provide the airline with a negative Covid-19 PCR test taken within 72 hours of the departure time.

Once in Managua, Garrett arranged to be picked up at the airport and driven the three and a half hours to the marina by Luis, a local we befriended earlier in the year. They picked up groceries and water on the drive too—the nearest grocery store is about forty-five minutes away from the boat.

Garrett will now spend a few days prepping Thisldu for the journey. She has been tied to the docks of Marina Puesta del Sol for more than eight months, the longest that she has sat idle for, well, a very long time. We employed a man named Esteban to look in on Thisldu, run her engine weekly, and send us a report in our absence, and Garrett was happy to report last night that everything looks as good as can be.

The plan is to officially check out of the country tomorrow (which involves a group of officials coming to the marina to process paperwork) and depart on the 171-nautical mile journey to Costa Rica on Tuesday morning. Although Garrett is single-handing this leg of the journey, he will be accompanied by two other solo sailors who are moving their own vessels to the same marina in Costa Rica, which has given us all peace of mind. They are all smart, safe, level-headed sailors who are more than capable of making this passage.

November is typically the best time to sail in Nicaragua because it (usually) falls after the hurricane season and before the Papagayos—a local weather phenomenon that drives high winds for unpredictable amounts of time. The two major hurricanes that have hit Nicaragua in the past few weeks had the biggest impact on the Caribbean side of the country, and Garrett will be sailing along the Pacific side. That being said, there is a lot of debris in the water, so Garrett and the two other sailors heading down are only planning to sail during the day so they can have optimal visibility. The marina that Garrett is leaving is the only one on in Nicaragua, and there really aren’t protected anchorages along the way, so options for nightly stopovers are limited. Right now, they are hoping to anchor in El Transito and San Juan del Sur—both open roadstead, or exposed, anchorages—before crossing into Costa Rica.

If all goes well, Garrett will be in Marina Papagayo by Thursday or Friday. But because we all know that timelines and sailing don’t go well together, he’s given himself an extra week of time as a buffer and has a flight home in early December—just in time for my birthday. If he makes it to Costa Rica this week, he will work from the marina until he returns home.

I know a lot of you are wondering: why didn’t I go with him? There are a few reasons. I was planning on going back, actually, until I brought it up over dinner a few months ago and his head jerked up in surprise. Oh, I don’t want you to go, he said. I don’t want to have to worry about you on top of everything else. The statement was direct, and true, and honest; my feelings were not hurt, and I understood. I didn’t take to cruising like Garrett did. At times, it put a lot of strain on my mental well-being. And even when I try to hold it all in and not burden him with my struggles…well, it’s hard to hide anything from someone you’ve been with for fourteen years.

So there’s that: Garrett wants to focus on all of the tasks at hand and does not want to focus on me or our relationship. I am okay with that. And then, there is work. We are both working full-time now. In June, Garrett returned to work for the company that he was at for 2+ years before we left to go cruising, and his new boss hired him with the understanding that, eventually, he would be traveling back and forth to the boat, and working remotely from marinas with WiFi when possible. Having that type of openness and understanding from his workplace has been a big source of relief for Garrett. There is (weak) WiFi at the marina in Nicaragua and (hopefully better) WiFi at the marina in Costa Rica, so he should be able to work from both places, with the only gap being while he’s at sea. I technically could do the same thing as I have a remote job, too, but it isn’t a conversation that I’ve had with my employer. I’m new to the company and am not really comfortable asking for a more flexible schedule.

And then, on top of both of those reasons, there’s the fact that Garrett has wanted the opportunity to solo sail. Maybe not under these circumstances, but still. It’s something he started talking about during our first cruising season, going out to sea on his own. What he is about to do is anxiety-inducing and challenging, but it will hopefully satisfy this drive that he’s had to be out on the water, just him and Thisldu, braving the seas together.

Garrett has spent a lot of time planning this leg of our journey—he’s pretty much been thinking about it since the day we left. I often think that waiting is the worst part; the anticipation leading up to the task at hand is often more nerve-racking and tiresome than the actual task itself. There are still a lot of moving parts of this plan that he has to deal with, but, now at least, it’s all in motion.

Please keep him and the other sailors in your thoughts this week! We’ll take all of the positive vibes and prayers and well wishes that we can get. Garrett and I will do our best to keep everyone up to date on Instagram, so go ahead and follow along there if you’re not already. Cheers!