PLAN: Just Another Dirty Four Letter Word (but here's ours anyway)

The BVI's

I have alluded to many "plans" throughout this blog.  Some have come to fruition, some have not.  For most travelers (I don't believe this is limited to cruisers) plans are simply guidelines, something to aspire to so that we keep moving forward toward our goals.  It's nice to have plans - without them we are rudderless ships - but it is equally nice to be flexible with those plans because sometimes our greatest adventures happen when we allow ourselves the ability to "sail the wind we are in" so to speak.  Opportunity favors the bold, so it behoves us to take risks, live courageously and without fear.

So, we have a plan...

We're going back to the boat.  With three kids under three.

Bold? For sure. Insane?  Maybe.

Of course some of you will call us crazy/stupid/selfish...etc, but we think our "plan" is actually pretty good.  Heck, I'd even venture to call it a little conservative.  But then again, you're talking to a girl who moved to Tanzania, East Africa by herself when she was twenty-four.  Crazy and conservative are relative terms in my book.

But I digress...

Flights have been purchased for the entire family to fly down to the British Virgin Islands (BVI's) January 2015.  We have rented a condo at the boatyard where we will stay for two weeks while Scott recommissions s/v Asante.  My mom will be with us during that time (after this past winter, she is positively thrilled at the prospect of the tropics in January) so she will help me with the girls while Scott gets our boat ready to splash again.  Once the boat is a "go", we'll move aboard and spend the remainder of the season lazily cruising around the British Virgin Islands.  << This here, is the "conservative" part.

We are going to take baby steps.  After sailing with Isla for twenty months, we learned a thing or two about cruising with kids.  With her, it was pretty seamless and easy for us, but we also know that going from one to three kids is no joke (like, for real...no joke).  We will be outnumbered and that alone ups the ante on the difficulty scale, not to mention the twin factor which pretty much puts that ante up into orbit.  Any parent of multiples will agree, twins are a completely different ball of wax.  So when we were making this "plan", we took stock of what we learned with Isla, and are omitting the aspects of kid cruising that were the most difficult, namely (in no particular order):  1) really long passages 2) overnight passages and 3) rough weather.  Obviously we cannot control the weather, but the BVI's are relatively easy peasy sailing; no passages longer than 4-6 hours, no need for any overnights, and relatively protected waters where rough seas and the need to watch the weather are significantly less than elsewhere.  In fact, it's kind of like sailing in a (really expensive and very crowded) bathtub.  Kind of.  

While this plan is in no way "fool proof" or a guarantee that this transition will be smooth sailing (pun intended), we think that this will give us a good shot at actually enjoying ourselves on the boat instead of simply suffering through it.  With this plan we have options... If we find that we have a good handle on things, we can be more "adventurous" and head to the US Virgins and even the Spanish Virgins and Puerto Rico.  If we discover that short day sails are our max, in the BVI's we will stay.  Our girls will still benefit from the same gifts that a life aboard gave their big sister (intense family time, living with less, majority of wake time outside in nature...etc), but without the stress of passage making, overnights and rough sails.

"But you will be outnumbered!" you say.  Yes.  We will.  But what I have learned thus far with three kids is the fact that if you have two adults on duty, it's totally manageable.  While I can handle all three kids by myself (it is not easy, mind you, but do-able) - it is so much better with another adult so we can 'divide and conquer'.  The fact that Scott and I will be full-time parents while on the boat is exactly what makes this plan viable, which brings me to the next part...

For the foreseeable future, we plan to cruise only part-time meaning that when hurricane season comes around, we will return to the states.  There are several reasons for this:  1) our families are here and we want to see more of them 2) sitting more or less idle during hurricane season was never very fun for us 3) summertime in Chicago is amazing and...oh yeah...4) someone needs to work, and at the time being while I am basking in babies, that person is Scott.

While the captain's gig with Island Windjammers worked out great for us in the past, it is just not realistic for Scott to leave me for a month at a time alone on the boat with three kids under three while he honor his rotation.  Being a single boat mom to one child was totally do-able, but three babies?  No thank you.  So we are putting our ducks in a row so that we can come home and make money during the summers and then cruise/travel as a complete family unit during the winters.  

So there you have it.  The "plan" as it exists right now.  Obviously all of this is subject to change and there are lots of things to figure out (namely our sleeping arrangement for a family of five in a two cabin boat), but for now it feels really good to know we will be heading south for the winter.  It's all about baby steps over here, in so many ways.

>>>>Below are some pics of our last time in the BVIs when Isla was about 13 months <<<<

There are actually PARKS for kids in the BVI's (these are as rare as unicorns in the islands, fyi!)

Swimming off the back of the boat is always fun

There are LOTS of little ones in the BVI's too, which is a big plus (also note: tropical slushy rum drink in mom's hand) 

Dinghy rides! 

Cane Garden Bay was one of our favorites 

Swimming in the bubbly pool

Boat baby :) 

Exploring the Baths

Leary of a squall on the horizon

Packing Up and Shipping Out

Should packing up be this much fun?

It never ceases to amaze me how much stuff you can accumulate on a boat.  It's insane, actually.  Live-aboard cruising boats are like the Mary Poppin's carpet bag on steroids.  We learned this lesson the first time we packed up our boat, and I am learning it again this time around.  Where the heck did all these clothes come from?  How many towels, sheet sets and blankets can one boat have?  And exactly how many was I planning to feed with all these canned goods?  Thankfully, my amazing mother flew down the other day to help me out.  Packing up all your worldly belongings and then traveling with them through three airports over the course of a day is a lot to handle alone, never mind twenty-six weeks pregnant while accompanied by a very active toddler.  So, being the awesome mother she is (and, okay, her grandmotherly adoration was definitely a motivator as well) she flew down to help me pack up and ship out, as it were.

While we are not taking everything off the boat (like spares, charts, galley gear, books and any thing strictly 'boat' related) like we did when we moved off of our first boat, Rasmus, I am prepping this boat to be left for over a year.  We want to come back to no surprises which further means I have had my work cut out for me.  An unused boat on the hard can harbor a litany of unpleasant surprises if you don't pay careful attention to how you put it away (mold and bugs come to mind).  All the food has come off, yes, even the non-perishables.  Every last can, morsel and spice must go bye-bye (our friends have been happy recipients of the bounty).  I have put every single one of our paper books into a large water-tight bin so that - should a leak occur (best to assume the worst-case scenario imo) - we do not return to ruined, moldy pages.  All our towels, throw rugs, and linens have been washed and stowed in airtight bags, again to prevent them from getting wet and moldy.  I have de-cluttered and cleaned out all our hanging lockers and cupboards.  I have packed up pretty much all of our clothes and the ones I have left are, again, sealed in bags.  Isla's beloved toys have been put in a box to ship home.  The fridge has been emptied and cleaned.  Toiletries have been removed, medicine boxes have been cleaned out, old sunscreen has been tossed, trinkets stowed away and anything we haven't used in the last year has either been donated or trashed.  Today the interior of the boat is getting a through cleaning.  It's been a busy and slightly hectic couple of days and, for an organization junkie like myself, it feels pretty good to be on the finishing end of it.  I'm the kind of person who, before a vacation, would clean her entire apartment (laundry and all) just to ensure I came back to a nice, welcoming place where I could kick back my feet.  Same goes for the boat (though you will never return to a decommissioned boat and kick up your feet!).

Of course there is a lot of other stuff to do.  Boaty-type stuff like remove sails, halyards, solar panels...etc.  Luckily, Scott is returning to the boat in four weeks after this last work rotation at which point he will sail her to the British Virgin Islands where Asante will be hauled out and put on the hard to await our return as a crew of five (!?).  He will be able to finish where I left off so the urgency is not 100% on me at the moment, though I do want to make his job as easy for him as possible.  The goal in all this, of course, is to come back to the same pristine boat that I am sitting on right now (though we do plan on having some modifications made to make the boat more family-of-five friendly).

So that is where I am at right now.  We fly out tomorrow morning, bright and early.  Luckily, the busyness of it all and the distractions (and help!) of our amazing friends have forced me to focus on the now and not dwell on the fact that this is my last full day on our boat for a very long time.  If idle hands are the devil's playground, an idle mind is his nice and cozy living room where he plots his games so keeping busy has helped me from getting too nostalgic and emotional about it all (read: sobbing like a baby).

Also - I need to thank you guys for the incredible outpouring of support, love and awesomeness I have received (and continue to receive) since my last post.  Man, I love you folks.  For real.  Looks like a lot of you could care less if we are actually cruising or sailing and are happy to jump ship and follow us wherever we go - so thank you for that, this makes me happy.  Your kind words and support brought me to tears of joy and while I do not have the time to get back to each and every one of you at the moment, I do feel compelled to say THANK YOU collectively.  I really, really appreciate all the love.

The next post you read from me will be from a northern latitude.  Wish me warmness from the inside out 'cause the cold will be quite a shock to this system!

Road Trippin'

The other day I found a Google Map Scott printed out of driving directions to Ft. Lauderdale, FL.  This struck me as hysterical.  "Take a right and drive 473 miles".  Most people use Google maps for directions to a friend's new house or to find their way in an unfamiliar city.  Not us, we're going to follow those directions 1,500 miles to Florida*.  Funny.

Some people might think we're insane taking our six month old baby girl on a 1,500 mile road trip and while I must admit I had some reservations at first, I'm now totally okay with it.  So what if our car is a '94 Ford Explorer on it's last legs?  I mean, we've got to get there one way or another, right?  Scott, ever the planner and expert navigator, has mapped out our trip to happen over the course of 4 or 5 days with driving times of no more than 6 hours per day and scenic stops throughout.  The big highlights are going to be driving through the Smoky Mountains and visiting "Uncle Al" and his lovely wife, Willa, in Hilton Head for a couple of days.  Fun stuff.

We're excited.  The fact of the matter is that even though we're not on our boat, we're about to embark on a little adventure.  We don't know exactly what lies ahead, we're not certain where we'll end up every night, and there are sure to be peaks and valleys along the way but we have returned to our roaming and roving lifestyle and that feels pretty good...butterflies in the tummy good.

Filling up the tank, cranking up the tunes, and hitting the open road on the hunt for adventure is a quintessentially American thing to do.  Few things elicit the freedom that the road trip evokes.  It is, in fact, a little like cruising.  After all, cruising sailboats are just glorified RV's right?

Yee haw! We hit the open road tomorrow morning!  If you want to keep up with all the action and see pictures and updates of our trip, stop by our Facebook Page where I will be posting daily!

Love,
Brittany, Scott and Isla

* Yes, we have "real" maps and an atlas as well.

Rasmus Is Sold

They say the two happiest day's in a boat owners life are the day he buys his boat, and the day he sells it.  While I can confirm this is pretty accurate, the latter is bittersweet.  It is the closing of a door, but the type that allows for another to be opened.  It is a relief, for sure, to no longer own two boats.  It is wonderful to have Rasmus off our heaping plate of "things to think about" (and pay for!).  It is sad, however, to officially say goodbye to her; the boat that, literally, set sail to our dreams.

I will be posting more on the details of the selling process; how we did it, what we did wrong and what we'll do differently when we do it again, but the bottom line is: She is sold.  She has a new wide-eyed and excited owner who I am pretty certain will take as good care of her as we did, and who will benefit greatly from the same patience, strength and tenacity with which she taught us.

Scott and I consider ourselves very lucky to have sold her so fast in this market (in Trinidad no less!).  The very day we announced she was for sale, a blog follower reached out and we have been in negotiations with him ever since.  The entire process had some ups and downs, but the deal was finalized yesterday.  That is under 50 days if you're counting.  Not too shabby.

While officially we worked without a broker - we absolutely could not have sold her without the guidance, support and expertise of our good friend and veteran boat broker Allen Schiller.  If ever you are in the market for a broker (whether buying or selling), this is your guy.  He won't work for free for you like he did for us, but he'll work as hard and with as much heart.  This deal would NOT have happened without him, that I know for sure.  So Allen, I know you are reading:  We owe you BIG TIME buddy!! Thank you, from the bottom of our bilge...

If there was ever a question about what Scott and I can accomplish, let's just consider what we have done in the last five months: decided to buy a bigger boat, made three big trips to Florida and South Carolina to look a boats, bought a new boat in Florida, put our old boat on the market in Trinidad, removed all our stuff from her, shipped it all to Florida and sold her.  Oh yeah, and we had a super awesome little baby girl. We make things happen.

In other news, it looks like Scott, Isla and I will be road tripping down to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in about two weeks to officially move aboard Asante and begin our new life on her.  We have no idea how long we'll be there (or if we'll make it, we'll be driving a 20 year old Ford Explorer!), but it feels good to be moving forward and beginning a new chapter...

Fair winds and following seas, Rasmus.  We'll miss you!

Love,
Brittany, Scott & Isla

Logistical Nightmare

"You do realize we are moving in a couple weeks, right?" Scott said to me yesterday as we were sitting in the kitchen, sipping on coffee and coconut water and working on really important things, like the re-design of this blog.  "I mean, we have nothing ready and a lot to do" he went on to say.  If I were an ostrich, I would have stuck my head in the sand right then and there.   You see, I have been riding in first class on the procrastination train for quite some time now and it's been pretty dang comfy.

I guess you could say we're a little overwhelmed.  We've been here before.  This time, though, the scenario is different.  We have a new boat, we have thirty-four boxes of our stuff being shipped from Trinidad to Ft. Lauderdale that we have to ensure gets to the boat somehow, we have an old boat we're in the process of selling, we have projects to coordinate on the new boat, and gear to order and install.  We have to change over our bank accounts because Chase is charging us up the wahzoo for foreign use, and Bank of America is fee-friendlier.  We have to pack up our life here in boxes and bags and figure out a cost-effective way to get it all down south.  Then, when we get to Ft. Lauderdale we have to find a cheap hotel to live in for a week or so while we install thru hulls for our new watermaker because the yard we are at does not allow live-aboards.  Once we've done that, we have to find a slip or marina* where we're going to live on the boat once we put her in the water for a yet-to-be-determined length of time while we finish up projects and installations to make Asante blue-water ready.  Oh, and we need to unpack all those damn boxes all while maintaining Isla's coveted nap schedule 'cause a baby's gotta sleep!

Did I mention we're up against a clock?  Scott has to report to Grenada for an eight week work rotation on s/v Diamant at the end of November.

Which leads us to our next round of logistics....

The way we see it we have two options.  One is that Scott assemble's a crew of buddies to sail Asante down to Grenada in "delivery mode" (i.e. non-stop, a 3 week trip) so that Isla and I can live aboard and see Scott once or twice a week.  This, however, means we don't have much time to get Asante ready.  The "Plan B" if we don't have enough time for "Plan A" is for me and Isla to be nomads.  We'll stay on the boat in Florida a couple weeks, rent a place in Grenada for a couple weeks, spend Christmas in Florida with my family for a couple weeks and come home for a couple weeks.  I prefer plan A.

Enter logistics round three...

Then there is the question of what happens after he completes his next work rotation which ends mid January if "Plan A" doesn't transpire.  Assuming we keep the boat in Florida, do we sail straight for the Caribbean and continue where we left off?  Or do we head over to the Bahamas and cruise those easy and familiar grounds for a while before making a bee-line for the windwards and leewards?  We just don't know.  Too many variables and unknowns at this point.  The whole thing reminds me of one of those choose your adventure type books.  "If you do x, go to page 18...if you do y, turn to page 24..."

Sigh.

See what we're dealing with over here?

None of this stuff is impossible, but it is a lot when all heaped together.  We'll figure it out.  We always do.  But at the moment, we're in the midst of a logistical nightmare and all I want to do is ignore it and see if it will magically work itself out.  Which I know it won't.  The Motivation Train, however, is right around the corner and there's a seat on board with my name on it!

Love,
Brittany, Scott & Isla

* Anyone down there in the Ft. Lauderdale area have/know of a slip we could use?  Know of any monthly-rate slips we could use?  This would be a huge help to us!  Email us at: windtraveler09 (at) gmail.com.

Homecoming and the Now

My handsome hubby comes home today. Can you believe it has been four weeks since Scott left?  I can't.  When we first came home to have Isla, this moment seemed an eternity away, a fuzzy spec on the horizon.  Scott returning from Grenada was a milestone for us because we knew that when he finished his work rotation, our time here on land would be coming to an end.  We are now on the home stretch of this visit, the slippery downward slope that occurs at then end of any significant hiatus where time seemingly goes into overdrive by passing even more quickly as the days become numbered.

The other day I took a fantastic yoga class where the teacher talked about the concept of time and how we are always moving from point A to point B, carving up our lives in digestible chunks.  Everything we do has a beginning and an end, it's how we humans create order in our lives. "But..." she continued, "it is just as important to pay close attention to the middle, the transitions - and be mindful that incredible things can happen in the 'in between' as well".  I am not talking about anything new here, being present in the "now" is not a new concept.  It is one, however, that becomes harder to master as the world around us becomes full of distraction. "We're living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence," says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace, and he's right.  It is hard to be present when we have a thousand and one responsibilities, when we have schedules to keep, when we have places to go and people to see.

This time home, this "transition", has been incredible for us.  "Don't you miss the boat?" people ask.  I always answer that, yes, of course we miss our boat and our life afloat - but this "visit" (even if it was 5 months!) was always a brief rest-stop in between adventures, it always had an expiration date.  That simple fact of impermanency made living on land a pure joy, a time to cherish, a time to take advantage of and appreciate because it was never going to last indefinitely.  I think that if we always look at our lives as constantly changing, if we are mindful that no condition is permanent - perhaps we would all live a little more 'in the present'.  If you knew exactly how many days you had left to live, would you live them differently?  How?  Would you love a little more? Would you exercise more patience and practice more compassion? Would you laugh a little harder and care a little less what others thought?  I think it's an interesting question.

The First thing to understand about the universe is that no condition is “good” or “bad.” It just is. So stop making value judgments. The second thing to know is that all conditions are temporary. Nothing stays the same, nothing remains static. Which way a thing changes depends on you.

Neale Donald Walsch

Scott comes home today which means we are mere weeks away from moving aboard our new boat and starting a new chapter in our lives.   Despite what it might seem to all of you out there in cyberspace, however, our journey never stopped.  We just changed tacks for a little while.

Love,

Brittany, Scott & Isla

From Dream to Reality: Our Timeline

A lot of people ask us how long it took us to turn our dream into reality...while the beginning stages of this "journey" are well chronicled deep within the bowels of this blog, I figured I'd sum it up for those of you who are planning/dreaming/scheming a similar adventure.

First of all, this life was both of our dreams.  I can't recall for sure, but I'm pretty certain our intentions of living a gypsy life at sea came up during our very first conversation.  I mention this because I think it's important.  Neither of us had to spend any time convincing the other that this is what we should do.  I hear from a lot people (men, mostly) who have been dreaming of a life at sea who's partners are either flat out against it or reluctant participants.  Scott and I lucked out when we found each other and we knew it.  Almost the instant we got together in August of 2007, this plan of "sailing around the world" was hatched and steps were taken to turn this dream into a reality.

The first year was spent talking about the plan, mostly.  After all - we were in a new relationship and while we both had the underlying feeling that we were in it for the long haul, we took it slow.  Things didn't really get kicked into high gear until mid-2008 when we got really serious about each other and this "plan" of ours and started looking for boats.  This is usually an incredibly exciting and equally daunting part of the process for wannabe cruisers.  Many people spend years looking for the "right" boat - fortunately for us, we didn't have that much time.  We opted to look for boats in our immediate area (namely, the Great Lakes) so that we didn't have to spend time or money flying from coast to coast looking for a boat.  Surely there had to be something in our neck of the woods, right?  They say the first boat you buy is the easiest because you don't know what want and what to look for and we found this to be true.  Blissful ignorance!  I did a lot of online research and poured through piles of sailing books and magazines and the picture became a little more clear for us when Scott and I came up with a very specific list of things we thought we wanted in our future boat.  That list, combined with the fact that we had both a location and a budget to further define our parameters helped narrow our search considerably.

I started looking online for boats in late 2008 and we found our Rasmus in the beginning May of 2009 and she was surveyed by the end of that same month.  We bought her in June and sailed her to Chicago in July.  That's about a seven month turn around which, from what I've gathered from other cruiser's, is pretty dang fast.  Again - Scott and I lucked out.  The stars were aligned and, despite being totally green in the whole "boat buying" thing, we found ourselves a fantastic cruising boat.

Once we bought our boat in July of 2009 we knew there was no turning back.  We set a 'tentative' departure date of August 2010 to shove off via the Erie Canal and started making lists.  Lots and lots of lists;  what needed to be replaced, what needed to be fixed, books we needed to read, items we needed to get...  Our life was (and still is) measured by project lists that seem to grow and shrink daily with the Dow Jones.  We had just over a year to prepare our boat for hard-core live-aboard cruising and we had a lot to do.  We didn't do much (if any) real work on her that summer, and that winter we hauled her out and started work.  I'm not going to break down everything we did, as that is all documented on our refit page but suffice it to say we did a LOT.

Because getting out of dodge sooner rather than later was our #1 priority, we opted to hire out help to refit our boat in order to save time.  While DIY'ing is fantastic (we actually did a lot of this as well), it will take you a lot longer to get to the starting line especially if you are learning as you go.   We enlisted the expertise of C&E Marine Group to help us with our boat electronics and we hired Rentner Marine to install our new Yanmar engine as well as install our new Edson chain and cable steering.  These were probably two of the smartest decisions we made.  Both of these companies proved worth their weight in GOLD and not only did they do incredible work to our boat, we learned a TON working alongside them.  To this day we call and talk to them if we have questions or need advice and, after working together for nearly a year, are happy to call them our friends.

Our boat was "splashed" in July where Scott and I continued to work on her just about every spare hour we had.  Oh yeah, we also got married.  I quit my job in August to work on the boat full time and Scott followed suit in early September.  We worked on Rasmus like crazy having passed our August deadline and set a new one.  We knew we had to leave by the end of September or else we would have been forced to take the Mississippi River down south - something we both did not want to do.  We were burning the midnight oil working from 8am till after midnight most days in a desperate attempt to beat the clock.

On September 28th, 2010 - Scott and I left the dock for the last time, and have sailed over 5,000 nautical miles since.

So, while both Scott and I had been dreaming of sailing around the world since our early teens, we really went from "dream to reality" in under three years.  Not too shabby!

Love,
Brittany & Scott

True Blue

We’ve done it. We have sailed almost 4,000 nautical miles and we’ve made it to the Virgin Islands. According to many, we are now “officially” blue-water cruisers. We’ve sailed down the East coast, crossed the Gulf Stream, cruised the Bahamas and the Turks & Caicos, traversed the difficult northern coast of the Dominican Republic, crossed the Mona passage, cruised the south coast of Puerto Rico and - eight months after we began - we have made it to the Virgins via the “thorny path”. 


We have graduated.

It feels good. It feels real good.

Our plan is to continue heading south to Grenada where we will be keeping the boat for hurricane season. We are heading back to Chicago for my brother’s wedding in June, which we are both standing up in, as well as the wedding of one of my best friends.  Next season we plan to head back up the island chain to see more of what we missed.

From there, who knows...but we’re liking the sound of Baja, Mexico a lot.

We shall see!

 Love,

Brittany & Scott

On Planning...

Sigh.  Oh plans!  I have always been more of a "fly by the seat of my pants" type of girl.  I like to dive in head first and just get downright and dirty with what I'm gettin' into.  I have found the chances of backing out are significantly less when you are, well, immersed.  A toe in the water is easy to take out - but a whole body?  Now that is commitment!

I have lots of examples in my life of this working.  Backpacking in Europe at 18 with a few ripped out chapters from a Lonely Planet and a Europass...running a marathon with no formal training save for a weekly phone call to my cousin (who WAS formally training) asking "how many miles you running this week?"...moving to East Africa with nothing but a hope, a dream and 3K in travelers checks...travelling solo through South East Asia for 3 months with little more than wanderlust and a grin from ear to ear...hopping off a sailboat in Argentina and travelling around that neck of the woods for 5 weeks solo...oh, and I bought a 35 year old sailboat just to get the ball rolling on THIS plan.  All of these things I did with very little (if any) planning.  Sure, I had a rough "skeleton plan" of what I wanted to do, accomplish and/or see.  But I didn't slave over maps, guidebooks, and travel forums - I just don't have the patience or energy for all of that, to be quite honest.  Not to say that planning is bad, but if I've learned anything - it's that plans change.  Especially when it comes to travel.

Which brings me to THIS next chapter.  Sailing around the world.  It really does people's heads in!  They always want to know exactly where we are going and when (some even reach for the nearest map or globe) and we always just laugh and say, "we don't really know" - because, we really don't (if you want our loose itinerary see this post).  We are approaching this journey as a runner does a marathon.  You don't start a marathon and think "here I am at mile zero of 26.2" - you break it down into little segments.  Mile by mile.  Piece by piece.  So we most likely won't ever know our "exact route" - we will chip off one leg...and then plan the next.  And when we get to that destination, we'll kick back with a few cold (or warm) ones, chat with other cruisers, consult our myriad of crusing books and guides, and come up with the next leg of the journey.  There are SO many places to see, and SO many different ways to go. We know the how of the journey - and we want to remain completely and totally open-minded about the when and the where.  I know this might seem careless, but I assure you it is not.  There is a difference between planning and preparation.  We are preparing for this trip, little by little - the way we see it, it's impossible to actually plan it.

All that said, there are obviously two different schools of thought on "planning" - as illustrated in these two quotes:

Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans - John Lennon

and

He who fails to plan, plans to fail - Proverb

Hmmmmm.....What side of the fence do you fall on?  I always liked John Lennon myself.

Love,
Brittany & Scott

The Best Laid Plans o' Mice and Men...

Everyone these days seems to know what Scott and I are up to, and after the #1 question: Are you scared? (See previous post for answer) comes most common question #2: So what’s the plan!?

Sigh. What is the plan? Well (brace yourself people)…we don’t really know. I have found in my travels that the more you plan, the more disappointment you encounter (by way of broken plans). Weather changes, places close, people get sick, trains go on strike, buses break down, guidebooks are wrong (Traveler tip: if travelling to South East Asia DO NOT skimp and buy an out-of-date travel guide. I learned this lesson REAL quick when I tried to stay at a hostel that was the “hot spot” two years prior but no longer existed. Fun times.), and you never know what you will get into, onto, or out of while on the road. Spontaneity is everything when you travel. That’s my 2 cents anyway. Another, more sobering reason for not having a strict plan or timeline is that the #1 cause for disaster at sea are captains and crews making poor decisions in order to make a timeline. Sticking to a rigid schedule to be at point “x” by time “y” can cause you to make very bad and desperate choices you wouldn't usually make (like thinking you can “outrun” a brewing hurricane, for example).

That said we do have a very LOOSE plan. Right now it is this: We are planning on sailing our boat as much as we can the remainder of this summer (she has to be out of the water October 5th). This fall/winter, we are planning on keeping her at Crowleys, a local yacht yard where we plan on spending many fall and winter weekends getting her kitted out for cruising (fixing stuff, making upgrades, installations…etc. this is another VERY long to-list that is exponentially growing). Once we survive yet another dreaded Chicago winter (ugh) and spring has sprung – we plan on selling all our stuff (attention ladies who wear size 8 shoe!), storing the rest (mom, dad? Insert big doe eyed innocent smile) and moving aboard Rasmus in April 2010 (when our apartment lease is up). From there, we plan on continuing to fix all the things that continue to break (this past weekend’s victim? our FM radio!), sail all the time, and spend lots of time with our wonderful close friends who have things like a) laundry machines b) refrigerators and c) TV’s (wink).

We plan on enjoying one last Chicago summer, because, frankly – this particular summer flew south, or rather – to the Pacific Northwest (104 degrees in Portland!?) and we need time to prepare ourselves and the boat. As of now, we will leave sometime next August (a year from now) and sail all the way UP Lake Michigan, all the way DOWN Lake Huron, and all the way ACROSS Lake Erie to the Erie Canal where we will have to take our mast down and motor. From there we will connect with the Hudson River, into NYC, and then... the Atlantic Ocean!

Our dates are not arbitrary. We have chosen this timing because when we leave it’ll still be (dare I say?) warm enough to sail North and will get us out to the Atlantic in time to by-pass the hurricane season (which “ends” November). Once we feel safe and storm free…we will follow the smell of tropical slushy rum drinks south along the East Coast of the United States with our ultimate destination being the Caribbean. This portion of the journey will probably take us 5 months (give or take) so we think we’ll kick it Jimmy Buffett style once in the tropics…you know, cheese burgers in paradise, wastin’ away in Margaritaville…all that good stuff. Can. Not. Wait.

After that we aren’t sure. There are many different “ways” to go. There’s a great book we own called “World Cruising Routes” by Jimmy Cornell that outlines every which way to go and when. We also know (as we have both learned in previous travels) that there will be so many encounters with other cruisers who’ve “been there, done that” and we trust we’ll learn a lot from them as we go. We are thinking that the “trade wind” route will be best for us which would have us going through the Panama Canal after the Caribbean…but, you know what they say – “The best laid plans o’ mice and men…oft go astray”. Truer words were never spoken...we’ll just have to see what the Universe has in store for us!

Lotsaluv!

Brittany and Scott