Changes in Latitudes…

We’re mere weeks away from a return to the boat from a long, unwilling exile from home. We arrived in the U.S. back in July of last year, expecting a return to the boat the first week of October after helping my parents move into their new apartment. Almost six months and many wrecked plans later, our return to the boat approaches.

It’s been an interesting six months, being back in the U.S. Spending the holidays with family was nice. Being close to our parents and children for a few months was also good and enlightening. It’s also been stressful, expensive, and at times difficult. But there are some important takeaways.

All Good Things

After seven and a half years living on the boat, we’ve realized that we need to find an exit strategy and take a hiatus from long-distance cruising. We’re not talking about swallowing the anchor forever, but taking a break for a few years to downsize, be near family, and regroup for a different sort of cruising.

The Call of Family

The big lesson we learned here in the states for so long is that, despite how much we don’t really enjoy the land-bound life, we need to be closer to home and family. Closer sooner, not later.

We’ve got parents now in their late seventies and eighties. Though they do not need us daily, it’s clear that our presence helps. And we want the time with them. We enjoy the time with them. And there will be a time when they need us more and we want to be a short flight or drive away instead of halfway around the world.

In addition, our kids are getting settled into stateside life. Will is thrilled with how his career is taking off out in Washington, and Danielle has two more years of college in Pennsylvania, after which she’s likely to end up in the U.S. for work or graduate school. Neither of them are in any imminent danger of producing the ultimate anchor for cruisers – grandchildren – but we still want to be a part of their lives.

With all the people we care about so far away, something has to give.

The Practical Reality

Over a decade ago, I sat down and created a really complex spreadsheet (that’s a sample without real numbers at the link). Its intent was to plot out a “what-if” for the cruising lifestyle. To see if, in theory, the finances worked out to sell up and go sailing for as long as we could. If it would not work in theory, it could not work in practice. But if you could make a model that worked in theory, you’d have a chance of making it work in reality.

Despite some setbacks, fall-forwards, unexpected expenses and windfalls, and a lot of contact with reality, the basic tenets of the plan were surprising in their accuracy. It predicted a probable cash-crunch in 2019, when we would have had two kids in college if Will hadn’t done a three-year bachelor’s (fall-forward!). This, despite things like the house taking almost a year and a half to sell after we left (setback…). We’re there now, and it didn’t surprise us. We’d hoped to avoid it, but c’est la vie.

It wasn’t disaster or ruin in the model in all but the worse scenarios, but the odds of running out of money versus the odds of having enough to cruise forever seemed about even. It’s all about not touching the principle.

So we find ourselves now…somewhere in the middle. Someplace where we can exit gracefully and regroup now, or push it for a few more years sailing and hope for the best. We’re tending towards the more conservative approach with a controlled landing so we can take off again in a few year’s time.

Goodbye to an Old Friend

Evenstar has been our home for over seven years, keeping us safe traveling halfway around the world with our family and taking us on countless adventures since we first brought her home in 2006. But she’s too much boat for a cruising couple looking at our long-term plans. She’s a fantastic boat, tougher than we are. And she’s fast and a great sailer for a heavy boat. But not what suits us for the future.

It’s not sailing her that’s the issue, Kathy and I can handle her by ourselves. But as empty nesters we don’t need all that interior volume forward of the mast; a smaller boat will suit the sailing we’re thinking of long term. And a bigger boat means bigger bills. Everything costs more, from bottom paint to hauling. For the sake of our financial sanity, we have to step away from our dear friend and move to something smaller and different after we regroup.

We can’t put her up for sale yet (hear that, NZ tax guys!), but eventually we will have to part ways. It will be heartbreaking, but it must happen since we can’t store her. She’s a boat for adventures and crossing oceans, and we’re stepping back from that for a while.

The New and Revised Plan

As always, recorded in wet sand at low tide. But the new plan brings us back to the West Coast of the U.S. in late 2021, by way of Fiji, Hawaii, Alaska, Seattle and points between.

Christmas in Hawaii

The next stage is to move from New Zealand in April or May to the north and east, to set the stage for a move to Hawaii in October or early November. As always, our schedule is set by weather, seasons, and storm schedules.

As early as possible, we plan to sail to Fiji. From there, we will spend the next few months moving east and north against the prevailing winds in short hops. The plan is to get as far in those directions as we can by October, setting ourselves up for a run across the equator at the end of the northern cyclone season.

This could include stops in Samoa (regular and American), the northern Cook Islands (Suwarrow and Penrhyn), and maybe the Line Islands (Kiribati) if we can swing it. This is the fuzzy part of the plan, and depends on our ability to find weather windows, sail on favorable winds, and get east. East is more important than north.

This is a part of the world you will probably need to Google.

Wherever we end up in October, the plan is to position ourselves to make the trip to Hawaii before Thanksgiving and spend the holidays there.

Back in the U.S. of A.

From Hawaii, our intent is to check off a bucket list item and head to Alaska in May/June 2021 to spend the shortish Alaskan summer cruising the pristine waters looking for icebergs, bears and whales. We’d head to western Alaska and make the cruise east towards Canada, probably taking the Inside Passage down towards the Pacific Northwest by the fall.

From there, it’s sell the boat and figure out our plan for the next few years.

How the Future Shakes Out

It’s tough to say how the next few months or two years will finish. We may sail all the way to Washington state. We may struggle to head back the way we’re planning; it’s not a common way to do things. We may decide to change how we get back. Someone could even come along who wants to buy the boat out from under us before we get too far along the plan – we’d be okay with that, too.

As sad as it is to contemplate an end (for now) to cruising and giving up a boat we’ve loved for years, the future still holds exciting stuff. We know we don’t want to own a home and join the nine-to-five again, so longer term we’ll always be light of foot and on the move no matter what we do. And no matter what, we DID it, we got out, lived on a boat and sailed halfway around the world – something we’d dreamed of and planned for years. A dream that never happens for so many.

I can see us regrouping to get back out to see in a few years, spending our time between Maine and Trinidad so we can be close for family and (maybe some day) grandchildren. The next two years are the time that we can control the landing the way we want to, to leave the door open for future exploration and adventures.

It’s been a hell of a ride, and it’s still far from over.