Waiting

One of my granddaughters' favorite books to read is Dr. Seuss' Oh the Places You'll Go! One of the parts of it has been rattling around in my head these last two months that we've been stuck here, and I thought you might enjoy it:

"You can get so confused

that you"ll start in to race

down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace

and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,

headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.

                                            The Waiting Place

...for people just waiting.

    Waiting for a train to go

    or a bus to come or the rain to go

    or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

    or waiting around for a Yes or No

    or waiting for their hair to grow.

    Everyone is just waiting.

            Waiting for the fish to bite

            or waiting for wind to fly a kite

            or waiting around for Friday night

            or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake

            or a pot to boil, or a Better Break

            or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants

            or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

                                Everyone is just waiting."

I confess - the last two months have been pretty frustrating with all the waiting to get on with our travels, but when I think how close I came to losing Tim, it's made me realize all the more that I need to live each moment as if it was the last, because it may very well be. Clancy's Marina in Oriental NC will not be The Waiting Place, but the place to squeeze out every bit of life, not waiting around for the time when we can leave to head north, but instead stopping on the dock on the way back from the head to admire the utter stunning beauty of the great blue heron as it lifts off to rest on the piling, scolding me for disrupting its breakfast. The place to meet new friends, to play music with our grandson, to enjoy an iced coffee, to savor the simple joy of having Tim brush my hair because I can't do it myself.

Dr. Seuss goes on to say, "NO! That's not for you! Somehow you'll escape all that waiting and staying." But life isn't a Dr. Seuss book and none of us is promised tomorrow. So if you find yourself in a Waiting Place, it may just be that you can find a way to make it a Living Place instead, a little bit like our Oriental stay.

Playing the waiting game

The mud flats east of Charleston

One of the things they never tell you in Cruiser 101 is how much time you'll spend sitting around waiting. If you have a sailboat with a five foot or better draft like we do, especially one that doesn't maneuver in broadside winds or currents like Kintala you'll have to plan around those winds, tides, and currents to move pretty much anywhere. We're sitting in Cooper River Marina in Charleston and our next jump is going to be in the ICW due to approaching weather. The next portion of the ICW happens to be the Mud Flats, a notorious portion that lays 3 feet deep at low tide for several miles. This means that we have to be at the entrance to it at mid tide to high, when the depth is up 3 feet and will leave us with just one foot under the keel. By the time we finish the transit of it the tide will be mid tide to low, the same three feet up from low, and we hopefully will not go aground. In 2013 when we transited this portion we did the same thing and still managed to plow  rift in the mud for over a quarter mile. So we sit, catch up on blog posts, do weather planning, top off the water tanks, carry out the trash, and wait.

We had a good time here. The marina is way out in the middle of nowhere and would not be a very good place to provision if you didn't have a car, but the scenery is pretty and the on-off access to the transient docks is excellent. It's also a great place to exercise these boat-stagnant legs since there's an elevated walkway from the transient docks to the parking lot that spans nearly a half mile. Last night we walked out to meet a long time blog follower, Scott, who lives here in Charleston and whom we had missed in 2013 when we originally left due to scheduling conflicts. We shared an excellent meal at a local Mexican restaurant and got to know Scott and hear his plans to move his boat to New York to be closer to his sons. It's one of the weird things about this lifestyle documented by the blog. There are people who know so much about us of whom we know so little, but it presents such a tremendous opportunity to meet new friends. We look forward to hearing updates on Scott's voyage soon.

Our waiting is starting to bring on some pressure of a deadline, something that we hate and try to avoid at all costs. Deadlines are dangerous to boaters of all kinds and, while we thought we allowed sufficient time to get to Annapolis before our May 16th flight out, the weather may have some other ideas. It certainly seems it will drive us onto the ICW, something else we're not keen on. So for now, we sit and wait.