I spent this past week down by the beach. I could see and hear the ocean from my bedroom, and at night, just before I closed my eyes to sleep, would watch the red blinking light of a channel marker out on the horizon. I used to spend hours watching red and green lights at night—is that boat coming toward us, or going away? Will we pass it on our right, or our left? Those were the questions that occupied my thoughts not too long ago. I slept easy this week, watching that light from the comfort of land, knowing that I wouldn’t have to navigate around that channel marker, grateful that I wouldn’t have to wake up in three hours’ time to change sailing shifts with Garrett.
It’s a little bit hard now, to picture myself sitting in our thirty-five-foot sailboat a hundred miles offshore, cloaked in the dark of the night and watching the stars glimmer in the sky above, hoping for dolphins to swim by so they could help keep me awake while Garrett shut his eyes in hopes of catching rest in the cabin below. To think about all of the time I spent in the blues of dusk and dawn and blacks of the night looking for those red and green lights, looking for anything in our path that might call me to change our heading.
That life feels so very far away. Like a dream, even.
It has been twelve weeks since we returned to the United States on a repatriation flight out of Nicaragua. In that time, we have made a home for ourselves in Charleston. Garrett began working in June and I will start my new job on Monday. We have rented an apartment, bought furniture, and leased a car. And—my personal favorite—we have rescued a feisty little mutt with a very pronounced underbite. Her name is Ellie Mae.
I am very happy with our life in Charleston. It’s an odd time to be happy with life, in the middle of a global pandemic and national awakening to systemic racism. So of course, things haven’t been and still are not perfect with our transition. Everything that we’ve gone through the past couple of months and the environment that we stepped into upon returning to the United States has been a lot to handle. The stress of being trapped in Nicaragua and getting confirmation of a flight less than twenty-four hours before it was scheduled to take off wore us out. Arriving back in the U.S. while it tries to figure out its new attitude and approach toward handling Covid-19 has been confusing, frightening, and exhausting. Watching the country erupt in this powerful wave of the Black Lives Matter movement and feeling the shame of my inaction leading up to this point while figuring out what to say and do to help now has filled me with anxiety.
I have been hesitant to share these feelings because, well, for one, they seem to pale in comparison to all of the pain and suffering that Black people and those affected by Covid-19 have and are going through, and second, I never want to have a “woe is me” attitude. However, I always strive to be authentic here, and wouldn’t feel right about saying that “everything is fine!” upon our return to land life. It wouldn’t paint an accurate and complete picture of what’s going on. There is a lot to handle in the world right now and I am acknowledging that.
But, in our new home, with our bed that isn’t in a crawlspace and all of the other creature comforts that I craved while living on a 35’ sailboat, I feel content. I wholeheartedly believe that Garrett and I are where we are supposed to be, and that we are better equipped for handling and creating change from our new home base of Charleston, South Carolina, than we were on our boat in Aserradores, Nicaragua.
Today, I’d like to share more around why we ended up here and what’s next for us and Thisldu.
Old Plans (Our First Season)
When Garrett and I quit our jobs to sail and travel (part of) the world last year, our intention was to travel and cruise for one to two years. We had saved a bulk sum that would fund our adventure, and planned to check in financially—and emotionally—to see if we still could and wanted to keep going after the first cruising season.
I’m going to be honest here and say that kickstarting our year of travel with a summer in Europe did not help the budget. But we have zero regrets. It was an amazing summer. An amazing year.
There are so many ways to travel on all different kinds of budgets and spending habits. Garrett and I did what was right for us to fully live out the dream that we had been imagining for so long. We wanted to take advantage of our time in Greece, Italy, Germany, Austria, France, Ireland, and England, and then the months that we spent sailing down California, Mexico, and lastly, Nicaragua. Sometimes, that meant spending more money than we had planned.
That was one of our biggest learnings this year: when you are traveling and especially when you are cruising, things do not usually go as planned. We had to be constantly adaptable to changes in weather, flight schedules, and a multitude of other circumstances that so often rerouted our travels. Going into this year, I knew, to an extent, to expect the external disruptions. I didn’t so much foresee the internal ones. I was not well prepared for the mental hurdles that were thrown my way.
I haven’t shied away from sharing the mental health challenges that I faced during our time at sea. The lack of sleep and stability really pushed me at times. The highs that I went through were so high, and the lows were so low. The extreme swings between the peaks and pits were, at times, too much to handle. Things were hardest in the first two months, driven by experiences like our frightening departure out of San Francisco and sleepless nights in Muertos.
By December, I worried that I couldn’t make it through another cruising season, to live out another year full of uncertainty. We had always planned on coming to Charleston for the summer of 2020, but originally thought we would just work summer jobs to tide us over until the hurricanes passed and we could return to Thisldu in Panama and keep sailing. It soon became apparent that we would need to return to regular work instead of just summer jobs, and, as 2019 came to a close, I asked Garrett to start thinking about that with me. I also shared with him that I was unsure of my ability to live through another year of cruising, to endure such extremes.
This was a big pill to swallow. Coming to terms with the realization that I did not want to cruise full-time for another season and communicating that with Garrett was not easy. I initially approached the conversation with him on our two-day crossing of the Sea of Cortez. He listened to my concerns but wasn’t ready to address them yet. He also asked me to live in the moment more instead of thinking about the future so much. Each of us heard what the other was saying, and each of us tried our best to respect what the other person needed.
It was an ongoing conversation, one that took time to shape, address, and communicate effectively through. I didn’t want to break his heart by not living out our cruising dream for another year, but I couldn’t keep breaking mine, either.
And he was right to ask me to stop thinking ahead. I do think about the future too much. It’s just who I am. But sometimes, it gets in the way of the present. That’s something that cruising was good for: being present. And Garrett’s reminder to just live in the moment, that stuck with me too.
Eventually, with time, the extremes seemed to even out. I took to the cruising lifestyle nicely. I appreciated the simplicity of it all; living a life off of the grid, fishing for our food, spending long hours at sea with nothing to do but read and watch the water.
The stretch of cruising that we had from December through March was fantastic, comprised of mostly highs. Things got rough at the end as we raced down the southern coast of Mexico to try and meet friends in Costa Rica and then had all of our plans—of meeting those friends and later continuing down to the Panama Canal—upended by Covid-19. Our cruising season came to an abrupt and strange halt as we sailed into Nicaragua, the rest of Central America closing its borders around us. We had intended to spend perhaps a week in Nicaragua, a month or so in Costa Rica, and a few weeks wrapping things up in Panama. We did not plan on spending over two months in Nicaragua or leaving our boat there during the rainy season.
Remember what I said about plans?
All of these circumstances fed into my biggest takeaway from this year: sometimes, I simply have to accept the situation that I am in and know that I cannot change it. As a future-thinking, results-oriented person, I have always figured out how to change or move on from that isn’t working for me. But when you’re, say, in the middle of a storm at sea, there’s no getting out of that situation. I couldn’t control what was going on around me; I could only control my reaction. I couldn’t remove myself from the uncomfortable situation; I had to sit with the discomfort.
I learned a lot of wonderful, important things on our sailboat.
And I don’t want you to get the wrong idea here. I loved our adventure. Spending the summer in Europe was a dream, and sailing from San Francisco to Nicaragua was the best and hardest thing I have ever done. I wouldn’t change a thing. What we did was beautiful and it was raw and it made both Garrett and I work through some things that ultimately made us stronger, individually, and as a couple. We are so fortunate to have lived the year that we did. To live the life that we do. It is a privilege that neither of us takes lightly.
Garrett, to the end, was living his dream. He even loved getting stuck in Nicaragua. Aserradores, the village that we were in, has streets lined with mango trees and pecking chickens and grazing cattle, and its beach has some of the best surf breaks in the world. Being there was a bit like stepping back in time. Like getting trapped in paradise. He found so much joy in the simplicity of the lifestyle, in truly living like a wild man, stranded on his sailboat on the docks of an isolated village in the tropics.
Of course, like so many others, Garrett and I grieved the loss of the expectations we had for the rest of our cruising season. That part was hard. Garrett had been dreaming of sailing into Costa Rica for years. And knowing that the year was coming to an end, especially in this particular way, without another traditional cruising season ahead of us, wore on him. It was definitely something that we had to work through, together, and by ourselves.
New Plans (Commuter Cruising)
By the time we reached Nicaragua, both Garrett and I knew that we would not be cruising full-time again, at least not in the near future. After hearing what I had shared with him during our crossing in December and spending a couple of months thinking it through, Garrett approached me with the idea of commuter cruising in February. We were in Zihuatanejo, walking along a seaside path overflowing with pink bougainvillea, Thisldu bobbing on her anchor in the cove wrapping around us.
“What if we return to the United States this summer like we planned, try to get full-time jobs, and come back to the boat on holidays and vacations?” he asked me. “We would leave Thisldu in Panama for a while, and then move her around to available marinas in the Caribbean—or maybe transport her up to Florida and then bring her down the Caribbean? I don’t know the exact plan, except for, we’d be in Charleston, and get to the boat when we could. I think it’s called commuter cruising.”
I felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders. This sounded like the perfect solution for us; we could continue to cruise and explore, but also have the home base that I craved, and, hopefully, eventually, work to provide us with the income that we needed. What’s more, Garrett sounded excited about the prospect.
“That sounds perfect,” I said, squeezing his hand.
“That way,” he continued, “we would have more control over our schedule—we would know when we were going to fly in and out of certain islands—so people could join us. It would be so much easier to share this with our family and friends.”
That, too, was an excellent selling point. Garrett and I love sharing experiences with our loved ones, and so wanted for our friends and family to meet up with us during our first season, but found it too difficult to know where we were going to be when, which made it hard for people to plan to visit us. We had a lot of distance to cover in our first cruising season; with our boat on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal going into the next, we would be comfortable with taking things slower, island hopping at our own pace, and having people join us along the way.
Of course, as we all know, our boat is not on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal right now, but, well, we got as close as we could. This idea of commuter cruising played a huge role in our decision to not sail back to Mexico as Central America closed around us in response to Covid-19; doing so would have put a lot of distance subject to a lot of strong weather patterns between us and our newly defined dream.
Our new plan is to return to Nicaragua in November—which typically falls after the rainy season but before the Papagayos winds set in—and move Thisldu down to Costa Rica. She can stay there for 90 days, and we plan to use every one of them. We will go to Costa Rica when we can—over the holidays, on long weekends, etc., and Thisldu will be kept in a marina when we are gone. After Costa Rica, we’ll go down to Panama, and after Panama, most likely up to Florida. But as you should know by now, this is all subject to change. We don’t even know if we’ll be able to get into Nicaragua or Costa Rica come November because of Covid-19. We can only hope.
Transitioning (From Sea to Land)
Many cruisers warned me, before we left, about the shock that comes from returning to land life after cruising.
This shock did not come.
I had so craved the regular comforts of a regular home—flushing toilets, my own shower, endless amounts of tap water, a front-loading refrigerator, to name a few—when we were stuck in Nicaragua, that, as soon as I had access to those things in the U.S., I became instantly content. The months leading up to our return to the United States were full of stress. They made me feel powerless and stripped me of hope. I know that I was not alone in these feelings. This year has wreaked havoc on all of us. It’s just that, my worries stemmed from our inability to get back home. As soon as we did get home, my personal worries dissipated.
Oddly enough, I think that Covid-19 has helped ease my transition back to the States because it’s made our surroundings relatively quiet. There are no crowds. We have not run into traffic. I can go to the grocery store and not wait in a long line. I can walk around Charleston without coming into close contact with another human being. I am not overwhelmed by all there is to do when one moves to a new city because most of those things are off-limits right now. My life is simple. I walk miles and miles every day with our dog. I go to the grocery store. I cook dinner. Tomorrow, I start work. I am very content and grateful for the things that I have.
Sure, walking around in a mask and seeing everybody else with their faces covered is strange. Navigating who to see and how and when is strange. Watching every state have a different response to Covid-19 is strange. This year, it is strange. But it isn’t the hardest thing that I’ve been through. Not by a long shot.
Garrett’s transition back has not been as seamless as mine. At first, he marveled at his happiness and love for Charleston. And then, in one week, we got a car, a couch, and a dog, and all of a sudden the reality of us not living on a sailboat weighed heavily on him. A life that was not too long ago so free was now full of commitments and restrictions. We anticipated this challenge, though, and talked a lot about it before we returned home. Still, expecting something to happen and actually experiencing it are very different things. But it needs to happen. It’s okay to not be okay. The two of us have just gone through a massive life change. During a pandemic.
Overall, though, we are good. We have our health. We have jobs. We have a home. We have a dog! Things are uncertain with Thisldu, but she is safe where she is. We are safe where we are.
For now, that is more than enough.