Thisldu

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Update: Where is Thisldu?

Audrey Ruhland

It has been too long since I last posted on here. I apologize.

A friend reminded us the other day—on October 2nd—that it’s been two years since we sailed out of the San Francisco Bay.

We motored, mainsail up, into the channel, tailing behind a container ship on an ebb tide. Our goal was to reach buoy number two, which bobs its head in the waters eight miles out past the Gate. Buoy number two was our turning point; from there, we would head south. Until then, we had to beat upwind. The swell got bigger, the periods got shorter. The night was black, slightly illuminated by the glow of the city behind us and the waxing crescent moon above. Twelve-foot waves were rolling underneath, sometimes crashing on our bow. The wind was gusting 30-knots on our nose. “There’s a big one coming,” Phil, our friend and crew member, would warn. Garrett mastered the swell skillfully. It was freezing, but he was in shorts and a t-shirt. “Do you want your foul weather gear?” I asked, “are you cold?” He wasn’t. He didn’t want layers, not yet. He couldn’t take his focus off of the sea.

I was tucked into the cockpit, under the dodger, facing back toward our stern. I exhaled as the waves washed away. Counted my breaths, in and out, up to ten, and then over again, like I’ve learned to do while meditating. I sang. I did anything that would help me breathe. My teeth were chattering and my thighs were shaking. I pounded my fists down on my legs to warm them up. I picked a peak south of San Francisco to focus on and tried not to freak out when I lost sight of it behind a wave.

We were miserable. Phil counted down the distance to the buoy. Three nautical miles. Two point four nautical miles. One point five. Point nine. We made it. Garrett steered Thisldu’s nose down and to the left. We were heading south.

That was the beginning of it all. A cold, wet, thankless night. It was terrifying. But if we turned back, there was no way that we—I—would pick up and try again later.

So we persisted.

We spent one month sailing down the California coast, four months in Pacific Mexico, and ten weeks tied to the dock in Nicaragua at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. We made the difficult decision to temporarily leave Thisldu in Nicaragua in May 2020 and return to the United States. Later that year, as soon as Costa Rica reopened its borders to foreigners, Garrett returned to Nicaragua and solo-sailed Thisldu the 130 nautical miles to Marina Papagayo in Costa Rica. She is still there today.

Garrett spent much of the 2020/2021 cruising season traveling back and forth between the States and Costa Rica, returning to Thisldu to sail her on the weekends and work remotely from the marina offices during the week. I joined him twice, once over the holidays in December, and once in May. I was hesitant to travel in the height of the pandemic, and, truthfully, hesitant to return back to the boat after feeling trapped on it for so long in Nicaragua. I have embraced land life. Garrett is still called to the sea.

He prepared Thisldu for the rainy summer season this past May, and will return to her again later this month. I will likely go back with him over the winter holiday, just as I did last year, but this time more eager to explore what Costa Rica has to offer. It is an exceptionally beautiful country.

Our plan moving forward is to put Thisldu on a container ship to Florida in the spring of 2022. We both work full-time, now, and do not have the time or flexibility to sail from the Pacific side of Costa Rica to the Atlantic side of the United States. We are both ready to have our sailboat within arms reach, and, although expensive, putting our sailboat on a container ship to transport her back to the U.S. is the best option for us.

Garrett is dreaming up his next big boating adventure; we’ll share more about that—and some other exciting things coming—in the future.

If you’re new here and looking to read more, check out these posts: