Cold shower

How do you get a family of 4 ready to leave on a sailboat for 2 years? I thought getting the kids ready for school on time was a challenge, but lord, lord, lord, this is going to shorten my life by a few years. My wife and I have talked about sailing away for 15 years. She was definitely on board for all the trash talking. Yeah, we're gonna do this and, that and, visit this place and that place...and so on and so forth. I guess it's not the same to talk about the Devil as it is to see him coming. In any case, she procrastinated quitting her job of 20 years like taking a cold shower, but she had me, on her shoulder like Jiminy Cricket. I knew she had to give fair warning before she left so I was on it, "did you tell then, did you tell them?", every day. And so one day she did it, she resigned. So what's my problem with this? Well for god sake she agreed to work until the week of our scheduled departure. We're not getting on a plane, we're leaving on a sailboat for 2 years. We have to prepare, stock up and test the boat, and plan, We needed to get in the zone...you can't get in the zone in one week. No you need a few weeks. I wanna hurry up and slow down.

Actually the problem with delaying our departure is that we are getting deep into hurricane season which is something like June thru November. August and September are the busiest months, you really want to be at a safe harbor by August. I'm okay leaving in July and taking my chances then because I figure I have a certain amount of good luck, and Gods' had plenty of chances to put me down before and he hasn't so why would he do now? But August? I don't know about August.

I wanted to be in a safe harbor by August, something like Luperon in the Dominican Republic. Our boat, "Mirador", is a mess. Everything is all over the place from all the work I have been doing over the past 8 months. We have not provisioned at all, that's what we call food on a boat, provisions. It's going to take a week to provision the Mirador for our trip.

Marie has planted the idea of heading north instead of south, maybe Washington D.C. This is a possibility, but it would mean that we would have to take the "Thorny Path" south. With a name like that, who wants to take the Thorn Path? Not I. The Thorny Path is a sailing route that takes you first to Bermuda, 700 miles east, out in the middle of Atlantic, and then south to the Caribbean, another 1000 miles. That's about 20 days of offshore, blue water, middle of nothing sailing. My crew is going to mutiny. You think Columbus had it bad?

So no, I don't think we will be headed north.

Just in case I wasn't feeling the pressure yet, our friends here at Dinner Key Marina want to schedule a going away party. Nobody just says "Hello" anymore. It's always "so when are you leaving?