As Time Goes By

Well, well, well … The Blog is not dead, and neither are we :)

It has been over (well over) a year since the last post, and I think I have some kind of explanation (needed mostly for myself, I think). First, and primarily, is that the blog was to be focused on the process of chasing a dream; moving forward toward finding, acquiring and then sailing off on our cruising dream adventure. Well, that hasn’t happened and quite frankly it was getting discouraging thinking about all the challenges that have gotten in the way. So fundamentally, I kind of lost interest in updating a diary with the daily things that we were up to, but not really being able to post up any real forward motion toward our goals. Secondly, there is Facebook. I’ve been in touch with a lot of friends, both blog followers and others, through Facebook and a lot of the day-to-day stuff is posted there.

Duplicating in the blog would only serve to expand upon the Facebook post, or to speak to the non-Facebook folks. Either way, it was an additional nail in the blog's (temporary) coffin. Robin and I have been insanely busy, more so than I can remember in a long time (maybe before we moved from Colorado. The day-to-day stuff is still there. Robin’s working in Leesburg and I am working in downtown D.C. I get up at 5:10 A.M. and get home at 5:35 every weekday. I don’t have the same days off as Robin so whenever we wish to spend time together one or both of us must take vacation time.
It is the proverbial grind and it has been wearing on us for almost 2 years. Not that we’ve been sulking in the commuter-driving-cubicle-dweller’s nightmare; we’ve been out and about and have seen and explored a lot of the area. We had a couple of great visits from close friends and I’ve traveled to Spokane to visit for a week. We’ve been to Monticello, Gettysburg, Crystal Caverns, St. Michael’s, Monticello and a few other points of interest as we still play tourists here.

We’ve been to a couple of boat shows and driven around Virginia and Maryland to view private sale boats in our size and price range. We’ve fought flu, bronchitis and I caught a 3 day noro-bug that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. We purchased a motorcycle that has proven to be a ton of fun and we’ve had a few adventures poking around the territory here on two wheels. Other than that we’ve been healthy and plugging along on our daily routines trying hard to not let it become a rut and us become drones.

Through all this, I decided not to update the blog. It just didn’t grab me up any more and motivation was definitely lacking to keep posting things that were kind of “well, today we did something interesting …” when it wasn’t really getting around to the point of “we are getting ready to go sailing”. We didn’t really have a set-in-stone plan for getting to where we wanted to be, but we never lost sight of that fact that we do indeed still hold on to our dream and we will get there. So, catching up with a year won’t be too hard … or really that necessary. Just suffice it to say that we’ve been trying really, really hard to get things (and I mean quite a few things) in order to push forward.

It looks like we may actually be nearing a threshold where it’ll be time to update progress again. We’ve now set in motion some activities that are going to take us to the next step in the plan. This was ultimately all about “sell everything, retire, move on a boat and sail into the sunset (or in our case sunrise)”. The part about selling everything fizzled badly, and the crash or 2008 is still a player for us (no matter what the politicians are saying).

But we had to take a hard look at what mattered, what we could deal with and what we couldn't wait for. We talked and scribbled and charted and finally came to the conclusion that we'll run with what we have. If it works, perfect and if for some unseen reason it's not happening we'll go to plan 'B' or 'C' or whatever is necessary. This isn't going to fall cleany and easily into place, but then chasing dreams seldom does.

I'll address a few of the 'pivot points' we've decided on in more detail, but for now here's a brief synopsis of the plan.
●Robin and I will retire within the next 6 months.
●We will sell our current sailboat (S/V Robin)
●We will sell our RV and truck rig.
●We will settle on "THE" cruising boat (budget and timing-wise.
●We will move aboard and begin retrofit/provisioning.
●We'll make the call for East or South (time of year)
●We'll cast off and see if we like sailing. OK, there .. I updated the blog :)

I think I'll tackle each one of these little items over the next couple of months.