Yes, we're still here in Panama City but our To Do list gets smaller every day, despite the fact that we keep getting things done that aren't even on it (and then have to add them just so we can cross them out). It's hard to believe we're about to make our way across some 4,000 nautical miles of water, more distance in one enormous puddle jump than we have done altogether so far. Hard to believe also, that a little over eighteen months ago, we girded our loins to make our very first passage.
By most cruisers' standards (including our own, now) it wasn't much of a passage, just out of the
South River at Edgewater, Maryland, into, very briefly, the Chesapeake, and then back into the West River to Galesville. Ten miles in total; none sailed, just motored. Had it not been for the late October bite in the air, a harbinger of much colder things to come, who knows how long it might have been before we cast off the docklines that first time.
Or, more truthfully, the first time without "adult supervision." About a week after moving aboard, our broker, Tommy, taking pity on us, took us out for an afternoon sail to run us through the basics. But still... What if we... or... or... The one thought that kept impressing itself upon us was how improbable it seemed to successfully move a boat from one point to an intended other knowing as little about how to do it as we did. But every morning was chillier than the one before.
