overJOYed

This dinghy, along with the boat behind it, will soon be FOR SALE.

We are overJOYed.  The title for the post is Ean's pun, of course.  Anyone who knows him would guess it.  As in: Dear JOY, we are OVER you.

When we started this crazy adventure, we set a goal - to get 'round the world - but we gave ourselves a two-year "out" clause - if, after two years, either of us wanted OUT of this life, then we would get OUT and get a NEW life.

The first time we WANTED out - really discussed it seriously - was in Key West last June.  I just went back to reread the blog post.  I wrote, "I'm sure I'll look back at this juncture and either laugh or cry hysterically."

Well, I'm looking back now, and I realize, it's not an either/or thing.  I can do both.

After we'd been cruising for about a year, I wrote a post called "The Backside of a Dream."  I admitted:

We're coming up on our one-year cruising anniversary, and Ean and I have been reflecting on our new life. We're still pretty clueless.  We've found this life to be more difficult than we expected.  Things break all the time and we don't know how to fix them.  Ean misses toast.  I miss floor space.  We hate being mono-lingual and sand.

We realized, even then, that this lifestyle is not a good fit for us.  But hey, we had agreed to two years.  Let's see what happens.  We had this GOAL, you see.  Of circumnavigating the world.  We thought we could do it.  We wanted to have done it.

To cruise or not to cruise....we've been back and forth a dozen times.  It's hard to explain, but as I wrote a few months ago, cruising has made us bipolar.  A couple of months ago, I was SO excited about making that big leap out into the Pacific.  A couple of weeks ago, I was getting excited about gunkholing around Panama and making our way down the coast to Ecuador.  Hey, maybe we'll do Galapagos after all!  Hey, Easter Island, how cool would that be!

A couple of days ago, after many long conversations, some bitterness and tears, some wistful sighing and wicked blame-slinging, we finally admitted to ourselves that the highs aren't high enough to justify the lows.  Or the lows are too low... or too numerous...?  Maybe, if we would have made it across the S. Pacific, we would have decided to stick out.  SO close.  But Things Fall Apart.

If you're a little sad for us... yeah.  But don't be TOO sad.  Me and Ean, we are lucky, and we don't lose track of that.  We need to figure out what the new life will be - and we have lots of good choices... more than we deserve, probably.

I'll end here for now... although of course there's more to say. Stay tuned. Our next post: JOY FOR SALE (cheap).

Anti-Inspirational Poster #004

We did it!  Relentless, unmitigated positivity for 24 hours.  Phew.  (Read about the 24-hour + challenge here.)  Truth be told, we had a lot of fun with it.  Laughed more in the past day than we had over the past week.  It was like a mini-vacation to Optimist Island - and absolutely we are bringing some of that vacation vibe back home to our every-day life on JOY.

But - I've already owned up to this - we actually like our little niche in the blogging/cruising community.  We are the "is it too late to get your deposit back?" counterpoint to the Happy People.

Honestly if I see that Mark Twain quotation one more time - you know the one - 

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
– Mark Twain

- I'm going to vomit.

So we found our own Mark Twain quotation.  Without further ado, we present to you the fourth in our series of Anti-Inspirational Posters:

Stupid stupid stupid everything

Ean and I have been sniping at each other lately.  I know, right?!  Us? The happy couple?  The smiling, laughing pair who put the JOY in More Joy Everywhere!?

Things have been going wrong.  Family tragedies, broken boat, ticking clock, draining bank account.  Disaster.  Delay.  Depression.  Disappointment.  Debby Downer?  Yep, that's me.

So this morning, after a couple of - shall we call them "verbal exchanges"? - I say, "Let's make a deal.  We won't say anything negative about the boat or each other for 24 hours."  Ean says: "DEAL!"

A half-hour later I am sorting through a bag of items we purchased during our last trip to the hardware store. We had MEANT to purchase a deep socket wrench and a socket set, which we need, we think, to fix our generator.  It was the primary purpose of our visit to Novey's.  We found the guy with the spiffy blue Novey polo shirt and the key to the display case, and he fished out the bits we wanted.  We already knew, from our other shopping excursions 'round these parts, that if it comes out of a locked case, you can't just stick it in your cart - it gets walked up to the cashier, and you pick it up and pay for it on the way out.  Off he goes, up to the front, while we nod and wave and then finish our shopping.  Only, by the time we got up to the caja with our other odds and ends, we forgot about the wrench and socket set. (It could be noted that if we would have remembered the tools, we wouldn't have known any words to help us get them from behind the counter, but probably wild exaggerated gestures would have done the trick eventually.)

As I'm emptying the Novey bag this morning, I say, "I can't BELIEVE we forgot the wrench and socket set.  How could we be so STUPID?" And without missing a beat, Ean replies sarcastically, "REALLY?  You can't believe it?  You can't believe that we would be that stupid?!" It dawns on us.  It is 11:52 a.m. We are Nattering Nabobs of Negativism.

I say, "Start over!"

Ten minutes later, Ean is engaging in his new favorite hobby: the door to the starboard head, which is still off its hinges - hinge-less, actually, to be more accurate.  You can read about how we got help to fix the port head door here.  Ean is tackling the starboard door on his own, but I am his trusty, if half-hearted, assistant. (I suggested we just throw the door away and put up a shower curtain.)  He broke off a drill bit in one of the holes for the hinge screws, so he asks me to bring him The Big Screwdriver, which is one of our favorite tools, because it is so multifunctional.  I say, "If it doesn't work on the screws or the broken drill bit, maybe you could just beat the door into submission."  His lightening-quick response: "Or I could just STAB myself."

Image borrowed from the cheery, ever-optimistic Livia
(SV Estrellita 5.10b -pfffftt, what kinda goofy boat name is that?)

Oh dear.  It is now 12:08 p.m. and we are resetting the clock again.

Sometimes CRUISING SUCKS.  People will tell you it doesn't.  But.  Really.  It.  Does.  And now it is 12:31 p.m., and NO, dear reader, I am NOT going to reset the clock.  I didn't say it out loud - doesn't count.

Tune in tomorrow (or maybe the next day?) to see if we manage to get through 24 hours of relentless POSITIVITY.

PS.  I just realized that I wrote this post on one of our many technological devices from which we cannot access the internet while on board.  And this particular device (an iPad) doesn't have a USB port, so I can't transfer the file anywhere unless I go ashore and find a wifi connection.  So. HOW COOL IS THAT?  An excuse to get lunch at Mi Ranchito, which is super close to the dock, and they're really friendly, they have free wifi, and good food - the most awesome papaya-melón smoothie - mmm hmmm....  Life is good.  (phew.  I turned that right around, didn't I?)  

PPS. And now it's 3:15 p.m., and we had a VERY nice lunch, and the Batido de Papaya y Melón  was AWESOME.  We have now been positive for 3 hours and 7 minutes - and counting!!!

Oh, JOY!

Anti-Inspirational Poster #003

Dedicated to those intrepid cruisers who are, just now, preparing to drive down the ever-scenic and lovely Intracoastal Waterway.

Anti-Inspirational Poster #002

The Backside of the Dream

We're coming up on our one-year cruising anniversary, and Ean and I have been reflecting on our new life. We're still pretty clueless.  We've found this life to be more difficult than we expected.  Things break all the time and we don't know how to fix them.  Ean misses toast.  I miss floor space.  We hate being mono-lingual and sand.

We read a lot of cruising blogs and check-in with several cruisers who have facebook pages.  These people, as I have noted previously, are mostly

younger and prettier and smarter and more creative than we are.  They fix engines, install solar panels, sew cushions, grow sprouts, revarnish their teak, and understand how their systems work.  In their spare time, they sketch, make jewelry, write poetry, play the banjo, kayak, scuba dive, take fabulous underwater pictures, and never watch television.

Recently, a few of these cruisers, in their spare spare time, have begun posting lovely scenes with life-affirming messages.  For example, there will be an image of a sailboat, at anchor off a perfect deserted beach, and inscribed across the top, in an aesthetically pleasing font, a sentiment about Living Your Life: mindfully, in the moment, to the fullest, or whatnot.

These cruisers - they are inspiring.  We admire and envy them.  Early on, we, too, aspired to be inspiring.  But as it turns out, Ean and I - we're more like a cautionary tale.  But that's okay.  We've come to accept and even embrace our identity. In fact, we've come to understand it as a mission.

This mission: to anti-inspire others.  We're here to maintain the balance of the universe.  Our message to aspiring cruisers, or anyone who dares to dream of casting off the ties that bind and living a life full of fun/adventure and/or intention/meaning:  Is it too late to get your deposit back?

Here, humbly presented, for the first time in graphical format, an Expression of Anti-Inspiration.

A Slice of Life

Ean is fixing the port forward berth, which caved in when we loaded it up with 350 cans of cat food, two cases of booze, six mega jars of peanut butter, two mega jars of olives, one case of tuna, one case of Dove body wash, and various other “provisions” (and, oh yeah, Ean was on it, too).

This morning I have TWICE managed to knock over Ean’s FULL glass of iced tea.  MORE TEA EVERYWHERE!