Downsizing

Downsizing. It is a constant theme among those who are working on moving off the land. Deb and I did a little downsizing this past week. I drove the truck nearly 2600 miles last week, from St. Louis to Pittsburgh to Cape Code and back to St. Louis. Once home I cleaned it up, ran it through the car wash, drove it over to a dealer and traded it in on a Nissan 350Z. We hope this is the last car we ever buy and that it will be the one that we drive to the boat. I'm pretty sure this doesn't fit most people's idea of "downsizing" since the car cost about the same per month as the truck, the insurance is a little more, and we used up some savings to make the deal happen. But the Z will fit in the garage and, when we do head for the boat, it will get us there faster!

The main purpose of the truck trip was to deliver the last of Kristin and Brian's belongings to their new home in Cape Cod. Scheduling pressures kept my time there to barely 36 hours but it was an excellent visit. Saying good-by to Amber, Kristin, Mike, Brian, Catherine, May-may and Christopher, so much of my heart living in one place, was pretty hard. The idea of having a boat anchored not far off their shore for summers, of having various "crew visits" in warm waters during winters, is quickly becoming less of an idea and goal and more of an...obsession maybe?

Our plans for a summer "open water" excursion in the Gulf, using a 38 foot mono-hull, is looming as a kind of turning point. We have very little experience in salt water, virtually no experience in open water, have never done an overnight sail, never been on a sailboat that was out of sight of land, and haven't spent more than a few days in a row living in a mono-hull. In fact, when I list it that way, it seems like we might have a long way to go and that there is much waiting to be discovered in our little jaunt around the Gulf. Still, if the $$ was there I think we would leave tomorrow and figure out a way to make it work. Which, I'm pretty sure, meets the definition of "obsession."