Let's go already ...

I always expected the transition from land / house / air / pilot to sea / boat / sailor / ex-pilot to be a bumpy one. It has proven a little rougher than I imagined. Original plans had been to go when we were ready but now we have to get ready to go. This is making the work load significantly higher. For example, just today I am dealing with finding a surveyor (we need to update the boat's value for the insurance company before it goes in a lift I don't really trust) scheduling a crane to pick the mast, settling on a shipper, and trying to get up to speed on installing the Cape Horn steering vane - which we ordered yesterday. Things completely up in the air at the moment include solar panels and wind generator, gas generator, dink and motor, what kind of bottom paint to use, and navigation equipment. To say my cup runneth over would be an understatement. Oh, the AC at the house broke as well and had to be fixed ASAP.

And I haven't even left for the boat yet this week - two days behind for babysitting and AC repair duties.

Work load aside, the emotional beating of saying goodbye to a life long obsession with aviation, contemplating saying goodbye to kids and grand kids, knowing how demanding living on a boat can be, and facing learning a whole new lifestyle without a net (or life jacket - as it were) has been substantial. I don't sleep much anymore and living with me right now can't be much fun. (Sorry Pretty Lady.) Sometimes, even with everything there is to handle, I find it hard to concentrate. Having my career ended for me left a sour taste and, at least for the time being, I am spring loaded to the pissed-off position, spoiling for a fight, and don't really care with whom. Come the revolution ...

... and yet, when the revolution does start I want to be miles off shore, maybe in another country, swinging on the hook and watching the sun set over a cold bottle of brew; the first hint of looking forward more than back. The plan now is to install the wind vane, pull the boat and put it on the hard in Carlyle, complete all the work we can while waiting for the truck (mid-August), head east, finish what we couldn't finish here there, and splash. By early September we want to be floating in the mid-Chesapeake, practicing our way north to the Annapolis boat show.

Once there we hope to get our cruiser decoder rings, meet up with some folks we hope to meet someday,and join the herd heading south. When the rest turn toward the Islands we will probably aim for the Keys. There are some places on the west coast of FL I want to see and staying close to boat parts might be a good idea for the first few months. We are sure to break things. If a couple of the wheels come off of the plan we can spend the winter in the lower Chesapeake or maybe Georgia. Come spring we will head for Long Island sound and places north. By then we should have figured out much of what needs figuring,and anywhere we want to go we will go.

A little more each day I find myself caring less about what happened and more about what I want to happen. Let's go already...