I don't know!!! — Harris Crew

Greg and I are both prone to a minor affliction where paralysis is a threat. This affliction is defined by researching / considering / talking about a pending decision for an extended length of time such that rather than narrowing a field of options, the patient yields more options than started with, resulting in a total lack clarity and direction. Travelling as we have been has put us both at risk.

Analysis paralysis. It's no joke. (Well kind of obviously)

Couple this with decision fatigue and you've got yourself a pair of lost sailors that feel like they are being controlled by the winds and currents rather than their own brains...

About a week ago, actually right at the time of my last blog post where we talked about how hard it is to basically know what the eff the wind and swell are going to do locally and how we bounced to Jolly Harbour thinking it would be all sunshine and roses but then was more like dandelions (not terrible but not as nice as sunshine and roses). At this time Greg and I were having a really hard time making simple decisions. Decisions such as...hmmm, should we leave here and go to the next bay? Simple question right? Well that simple question became an agonizing set of other questions like, do we think it's going to be rolly there? Maybe we should just stay here? But if we stay here haven't we been here for a long time? Shouldn't we move on? Would it be better to be one bay north of that? But that one is smaller so might be full? Is there a beach there? What do we think the holding will be like? If we go and we don't like it do we have time to come back in the same day? What do we think the conditions will be like if the wind is swirling around in the bay and not out of the east as predicted? What if the wind swings around from the south earlier than predicted, will it still be ok? You get the idea...and the questions just kept coming. And not just for the most important daily question of where we should be located...I mean for everything. Should we get groceries? How many veggies do we still have? I can probably cook for another 5 days before we run out of veg but if we leave here maybe we should get some things first? What is our plan for sailing? Will there be grocery stores within a walk? Is it worth going for just a few items? Maybe we should wait until we need to get a full load? Should we defrost the freezer first? Is that what we want to do today? Should we do homeschool first? What do people want to eat? Do we all need to go? Should I just go with Liam? Do we want to go out for lunch on the way? If so, where should we go? Should we try somewhere new?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Now I feel grumpy and incompetent. And can I please just go back to bed?

As I understand it, this is pretty common amongst people who travel for more than a week or two at a time. Andrew and Heidi (Greg's brother and sister-in-law) travelled for a year and they can commiserate; my biz partner and buddy Liz has travelled a great deal when she was younger (haha, sorry Liz) and she also validated this is a real thing. We knew we were in a funk, we weren't really having fun, and even though living on a boat is (a lot of) work...this felt like fruitless work. The effort that was required to make 1000 decisions a day wasn't feeling...worth it.

We tried just telling ourselves to snap out of it. Shut up and be grateful. Look around you and be present. It worked for short periods of time but there still was always another decision to make looming. And it was tiring.

I'm not sure what started it, maybe it is just a factor of us now being 6 months in to full time live aboard and it's like a 7-year itch, maybe it was a spin off effect of us trying to decide where we are going to put the boat for hurricane season (this is the hardest decision we have made since buying the boat I think...will write about this separately).

Whatever the cause, this funk fortunately coincided with me taking a trip back to Ottawa for a few days of work. This forced us to decide (ugh) where we were going to keep the boat in my absence. We wanted a place that wouldn't require Greg to move the boat alone (plus 3 kids) if the weather turned. After the hemming and hawing you now know we would have done in our current state, we finally decided to pick up a ball inside Jolly Harbour at the marina for 5 nights.

Advantages: regardless of the wind or swell, it would be predictably calm in there and Greg won't have to move the boat no matter what; also, he could maybe do some boat jobs with the kids that needed to be done since the water would be totally flat.
Disadvantages: the ball was $25US / night (vs. free for anchoring) and there is a certain 'stigma' cruisers put on docking or picking up balls when anchoring is an option...it sort of feels like a cop-out. Like you are less of a sailor. Ridiculous I know, but it's still there.

The cost coupled with us feeling like it was cheating sort of, the decision was harder to make than it should have. I was advocating for the ball...I wanted to know they were fine and compared the cost to (literally) one dinner out with the kids. Greg finally saw reason and we tied up.

So I flew out and 4 days of calm, decision-free days ensued for Greg. Not that he didn't work hard. He really did. In fact I speculate that the mental space he had from being tied on to a ball for several days let him actually contemplate the completion of projects that have been accumulating lately. Just removing one of the constant pressures (i.e. "where is the best place for Matriarch today given the weather and our short term cruising plans") was a huge relief and there was space for other stuff. Together with Liam he whipped all the lines, re-bed the windlass foot switches (that still leak a little bit into a v-berth cabinet when it rains or we take a wave), repaired the UV cover on the Genoa, replaced a deck light switch on the helm pedestal, figured out how to fix the D-ring that got half ripped out of the foredeck on an accidental gybe on passage (cough, cough, Andrew) and started designing the rain covers / wind scoops we want for the hatches. A week ago it would have felt impossible to get these things done because our heads were full of questions.

Genoa off the forestay and ready for sewing! Greg said he didn’t think he could have done it without Liam…and on top of that he was happy to help! I was so proud of him stepping up…if this is what happens when we pause and do boat jobs we should def… — Genoa off the forestay and ready for sewing! Greg said he didn’t think he could have done it without Liam…and on top of that he was happy to help! I was so proud of him stepping up…if this is what happens when we pause and do boat jobs we should def consider doing this more often!

Here’s the whipped chafe guard on the snubber after Greg and Liam worked on them. Those chafe guards slipping around has been driving us crazy every time we anchor.

What is the moral of this story? I think for us it's another lesson in doing what's right for you and not feeling like a sh*t about it. Maybe it's like "self-care, boat edition"...If we need to just stop 'adventuring' or 'traveling' for a week or two and sit in one place to reset our brains then that's what we should do. Plans, stigmas and expectations be damned. When I got back the boat was clean and tidy, jobs were done, people are feeling good. We are a little more in command of ourselves again. We got this. Well worth the $125 + eye rolls of cruisers dinghying in from the anchorage when they see our solid ocean boat with our kick ass anchor tied up to a mooring ball. I don't give a sh*t about that. We don't want to burn out 6 months in. We've said we'll keep doing this as long as it is fun but we know that fun doesn't just happen. Sometimes you have to pause the expectation of fun to make room for fun to even exist.

We've already made several decisions today. And we've discussed several others that are yet undecided. In fact, Greg just threw Panama into the mix of places we could summer the boat...Panama was not in the previous discussions so now we are even less focused than before....effing great. But we don't feel like crawling into bed and pretending like we don't have to lead this floating sh*t-show...we'll get there one decision at a time and when we need to, we'll pick up a ball in a protected harbour and live in the luxury of one less decision.

Much love,

P.S. As Greg read this post before I published - it gave him pause. He thought it was too negative. "But it's honest" I replied. He agreed but he also felt like we shouldn't be complaining about our life...complaining about something so small as having to make decisions about where we go and what we do. He said "my Instagram feed is full of these families who have just come over on the ARC and are in the Caribbean having a great time...I feel bad being negative". Interesting. I don't share this feeling at all. I think that a) everyone has ups and downs when they are living what appears to be an ideal situation and b) we have to be who we are. We don't have a blog to share an image of us...we have a blog to share us. An open and honest reflection of this time so that when we look back it will be a real account. Sorry dudes but that includes the odd post where I will bitch about having to make so many freaking choices - yes it is a privilege to be able to make these choices, yes we are in a beautiful spot, yes we are overall happy and healthy. This is just a moment in time. But one worth sharing...if only for my own sanity ;)