Written on July 2, 2020 whilst on a mooring ball in Young’s Cut, SVG awaiting out COVID-19 test results

I am sitting in the cockpit of Matriarch. It's 6am and the sky is bright grey. There is a nice breeze - strong enough to churn the blades of the windgen into a revving hum. I am pelted with the sickly sweet smell of the over ripe mangoes piled in the bowl next to me. It's an intense assault and has attracted several fruit flies that take a pass by my face from time to time. The sun has burned the skin of the plantains beside my mango bowl but their flesh will be fine - perfect actually. Everyone is asleep - the breeze is keeping them from waking up sweaty. I've got my super fancy instant coffee beside me which thankfully the fruit flies are not interested in. I'm going to have to deal with those mangoes.

As I look around I see a dozen boats all nestled in close to one another in this cut. The mooring balls are quite close, yet seem to be spaced well enough that when the wind and current are not in agreement and we swing in different directions, we still don't touch. After 4 months in a huge and most empty anchorage, this closeness feels like an intrusion but also like a little community.

Everything around me feels familiar. The winch handle that was left out next to the chart plotter. The SUP paddle that we disassemble and stow on the shelf to keep the UV from degrading the carbon fibre. The cruising guide, turned to Young's Cut, SVG and left open. A head lamp behind my shoulder and the forms for Greg's new free diving fins. The aforementioned super ripe fruit. The rod we use to pump up the hydraulic pressure on the boom vang and the backstay, a dish drying mat that was left out to dry but now is wet again from the morning dew. The fishing line and hand reel from our passage. All of this surrounds me as I type...sounds messy but it's not really...though I will admit some of those items should have been stowed last night.

On the horizon I can see a cargo ship heading north and another catamaran heading south. The cat has crazy orange hulls and I believe is heading for this cut. Perhaps they will pick up the ball in front of us and sit on our lap. I'll keep an eye out for Jimmy in his skiff who will likely escort them in. We are in a new place, having just arrived to St. Vincent two days ago. Yet so much of it feels familiar now.

Today is the one year anniversary of the hardest day of my life.

Greg and I were pretty close to losing it that day. Or maybe had already partially lost it since we spent the two weeks (two months?) leading up to that day drowning in perpetual tears, buried in perpetual lists and riddled with perpetual doubt. So forgive me while I prepare for a morning ramble down memory lane a bit. If you read these posts you know how I write...lets call it stream-of-conscious-with-limited-editing...so you know what you are in for :)

One year ago exactly, almost to the hour. Oh, the tears. Leaving our home, our friends, our family...man, that was hard. That was a huge sacrifice which we weren't sure would pay off in the future. I mean sometimes you take your medicine and it sucks but you know that it's going to ultimately help you right? Well in this case there really was no upside to leaving our friends and family; there was no pro to align with that con. We were leaving to do something different and they were going to to continue with their lives...without us. You could chalk it up to some serious FOMO I guess but it was more than just being afraid of missing out, it was the fear that in missing out, the relationships would be lost forever. We know we will see our friends and family again but when we were leaving...it felt like we were saying goodbye forever. And honestly, it will be a long time before we do see them. Now that COVID has changed the world, our hopes of being able to fly home to visit people have evaporated. We have to stay with the boat because if we leave we might not be able to get back.

You are probably saying to yourself "come on, people move all the time and they stay in touch with their friends and family!" And you would be correct. We have remained in touch with people as best we can but it's not easy and it's also, to be honest, really time consuming. The primary means of communication we have is WhatsApp which I now realize much of the world uses for more than just texting like I used it for at home (and even then not exclusively). I also use Instagram when we have enough data for me to do so. I've written about data before - it's super important if you want to be able to stay up to date with your peeps. Because it's not just the odd WhatsApp chat but it's also being able to video chat, scroll their feeds to stay informed as to their everyday life, and send your own updates their way. We don't have a massive circle of friends but it's still proven to be difficult. Time passes quickly and next thing you know it's been a month since you've texted someone to see how they are.

And I realize things at home, of late, have been shit. Which also makes it feel harder to reach out and chat because we've had it much better down here than they have at home. I don't really want to go on and on about this dive trip, or that jungle hike, or this cool person we've met, or that beach bbq...it's just not relatable and it's probably cloying. Even vibing over homeschool is hard since at home, parents are trying to work with the teachers expectations and curriculum (which the system is trying to sort out in real time) whereas we have a much more 'chill' schedule, set our own expectations and have been doing it for a year already.

As I've said before, this is in part why we've slowed our roll in the blog / newsletter communications. Frankly we didn't want to piss off our loved ones as they managed their own situations at home. Some of which are precarious, all of which are stressful. But when we stop sharing, we cease to be a part of their lives and I worry that a distance will grow. Let's be honest - part of what makes relationships work is having something in common, being able to relate to one another, I worry that the less relatable we are, the less relevant we are to those we care about. Deep down I know that our friends and family won't stop loving us just because we aren't there but the idea haunts me sometimes. And maybe we anticipated this before we left...maybe that's why if felt like we were saying goodbye forever. We honestly don't know when we will see them again.

And OMG the lists...the lists. The work involved to get here was so real.

***sidebar: Jimmy just motored past me to meet the orange hulled catamaran***

We had from September 2018 to July 2019 to prepare for the move. That's A LOT of time. Too much time in a way...maybe it would have been easier if we just ripped the bandaid off quickly. Similar to a wedding, or a huge conference, or some other massive event you are coordinating...no matter how much planning is done in advance (and you can spend a lot of time planning and replanning) there are certain tasks you just can't do until you are close to the drop dead date. We had lists of things to buy, things that had been bought but not arrived, things that had arrived but not been packed, things that had been packed and where they were. Then there was all of the house-to-boat decisions...in hindsight we got most of it right.

Truly we are living comfortably with the items we brought with us from home - there isn't anything we feel really stupid for having left behind. Well with the exception of Greg's guitar. I think we under estimated how much he would need projects to tackle. He really really really loves learning new things. Mastering new things. He wouldn't describe it this way probably but that's how I see it. If he gets bored or is feeling a bit anxious the best thing for him is to pick up something new and learn how to do it. So far he has learned how to free dive (and can get down to 40 feet now!), SCUBA dive, and sew. Fortunately our friends we are travelling with had a guitar and lent it to Greg so he has also re-learned how to play (he is self-taught and for a while was pretty good...wrote and played a song at our wedding even). So now when he is feeling idle he picks up the guitar and tackles a new song. It's perfect for him. There is always a new song to learn. We need to get his guitar from home or buy one along the way because at some point our friends will want their guitar back.

So that's it. The guitar. The only thing from home we regret leaving at the house. I do regret bringing so many clothes - Andrew and Heidi, you called it - I don't want to throw them away but also wouldn't mind having less-jammed cabinets. The biggest offender are t-shirts. I just don't wear them. It's either a sleeveless tee or a tank top or a long sleeve linen shirt if it's sunny. Short sleeved shirts have no purpose in my life - why did I bring so many of them!? Also warm stuff. Now to be fair it was freezing cold when we left Virgina and headed south. And it had been cold in the Chesapeake for a month before that. And I had to go home to work in the dead of winter several times so for all of that I needed warm clothes. But I still had more than I needed. I think I have 4 sweaters. Maybe 5. That's crazy. Again, don't want to part with them but don't want them here. We may explore shipping some of our extra stuff back home.

So for all the lists we got it pretty on the nose. Thank f*ck because that was next level planning and organization. Other families that we've met along the way, including our very dear friends on Alley Cat, can related to the sentiment "the hardest part was leaving the dock, everything else is easier" and man, that rings true. Sure there are some tough sails, some ear infections, some hard work but damn, nothing like what it took to leave the dock.

And aahhhhh the doubt. So much doubt. I've talked about this before and won't reiterate too much but on this special anniversary it feels fitting to revisit the doubts we had and debunk them now.

So often we felt like "who the f*ck are we to do something like this???" We would quickly squash it with "well if ____ can do it so can we" (insert a variety of names of people who we knew of who had already done it or were currently cruising). But we would got around again and again with this little dance. We also had some people in our lives who were like "Why would you mess with what you have?"...which also echoed in our brains because we would ask ourselves the very same. Were we going to regret leaving all of this behind? We knew that when / if we came back we would be changed in ways that we couldn't anticipate. How would that affect our life? Our relationships? Our kids? Would those changes be for the best?

***sidebar: not sure where the orange hulled catamaran moored up but I hope they are tied on now b/c we are getting some serious gusts at the moment, must be a squall coming over the hill***

Then there was the issue of my work. The business I share with Liz. I knew in the short term it would be manageable but I wasn't sure how manageable it would be in the long term. I still don't know. Liz has accepted this change that was forced on her with grace and support, without knowing the future. As consultants we never really know the future...our work isn't as predictable as some other professions. But still I felt like we were jumping off a cliff and not knowing what the landing would be like. Crazy trust exercise except we were trusting in ourselves to figure it out rather than trusting someone behind to catch you when you leaned back past the point of balance. Greg and I just had to trust that we would not let the kids, or each other down. We just had to trust that we would maintain a small source of income that would be adequate to keep going without dipping into savings. We had to trust that our friends and family wouldn't resent us for side-stepping and running parallel to them for a while.

The doubt hasn't gone away entirely one year later. There are still hints of it here or there but truly we are much MUCH more at peace with our choices. We've learned that we don't actually need too much to be comfortable and happy; this lifestyle is feasible for us. At least for now. And this past year has really opened our minds to what's next for us. I don't think we will go back home and plug back into the life we left. I know we won't. I suspected it when we left though Greg and the kids did not. They comforted themselves by thinking of a time when they would return to the house, hang out in our awesome basement, ride bikes down the street. I knew that when we came back to land we would be desiring something different. I just didn't know what. I have more of an idea now but it's still early in our travelling so will keep an open mind and let the ideas continue to take shape. I know for sure though that whatever the future holds for us it will include space, land, freedom to move about, water, trees, the ability to grow some food, privacy but not seclusion, outdoor living, small and simple shelter, renewable energy...

It will be interesting on our two-year anniversary of the day we moved onboard Matriarch if I look back at this and say "Hellz no!!! I want unlimited hot showers and king size beds!!" Who knows what the future holds? We predicted some of where we are but most of it we didn't even try. We just tried, and continue to try, to work with what we know and believe we can figure out what we don't know.

Every now and then I feel some pride? satisfaction?...not sure of the correct word...I feel something that is more than happiness at what Greg and I, and the kids for that matter, have taken on and settled into. Not because we are super awesome or adventurous or anything like that (we are neither) but because we were so filled with sorrow and doubts and we still trusted our guts that we could and should do this thing. Whatever this thing is. Whatever this thing will turn out to be.

If you are in the circle of people we cried over one year ago, know what we love you all just as fiercely as we did then. More so actually. Know that we talk about you all the time. Like weirdly often as if we had just seen each other last week. We miss all of you so much and so many times have ached to share something with you that we were doing. Have you by our sides as we scaled a volcano, or tried a new rum, or chased a pod of squid...or troubleshooted our generator ;)

Your love helped us get to this place. We didn't leave in search of something we didn't have, we left because we felt we could. And because life is short. Please be patient with us if you feel disconnected from time to time, as we will be with you...however, Erin and Kyle you are not allowed to have an Office trivia night without me!!

It's almost 8am now, everyone is still asleep. The sun is bright now and the cockpit is heating up...making these mangoes even more fragrant. Time for some oatmeal and I will see if I can convince the kids to make me a smoothie when they get up. One way or another these mangoes have got to go today :P

Much love,

M

UPDATE: NEGATIVE!!!!