A Wandering We Will Go

My sister is a genius when it comes to trip planning. It is her superpower. I seem to be lacking that superpower gene.

This week, Doug and I are working on planning a trip to the southern east coast to go boat shopping. It sounds like a ton of fun, and it will be, but this isn’t just a “jump in the car and make sure you know the way to the beach” kind of trip to Florida. We will have to coordinate with the different boat sellers to arrange times to view the boats. We will need to figure out where we are going to stay that accepts dogs because both dogs are going with us. We don’t want to spend a ton of money (and calories) on eating out so we need to plan for meals. We could be gone for a couple of weeks so a load of laundry or two will probably need to be done at some point. And the list goes on and on and on. It’s exciting and overwhelming all at the same time. But by this point in our journey, I should be used to that, right?

Wrong.

We have spent much of our journey so far just waiting. We made this crazy decision to live on a boat and then… a lot of waiting and just living our lives. Not too many HUGE decisions to be made. 2020 came and our youngest graduated from high school. At that point, we thought we were going to build our own boat, so we sold the house, moved to the farm in Missouri, and started working remotely. A lot of big changes at once, and an unexpected surprise when we found out the house we had planned to live in was going to need to be gutted and remodeled. We handled those rough seas and continued to move along with our plans. Then we went to the Virgin Islands for a vacation in 2021 and lived on a catamaran for a week. Plans changed when we decided we didn’t want to wait 7 to 10 years to build the boat and wanted to go NOW. And then plans changed again when we got home and I found out my employer had decided to eliminate my position. We still wanted to buy a boat but we would need to wait until I finished my degree so I could pursue a job in accounting working remotely.

Now we are at the point in our journey where we need to make some BIG decisions. Like, HUGE decisions. Imagine buying a house. Now imagine buying a car. Now imagine buying a house that is your car but it needs to float and not let in water and oh yeah, you need to work from said boat and your two dogs are coming with you.

When we tell people that we are going to live on a sailboat, you get a lot of you’re so lucky and aren’t you just living the dream? And yes, we are!!! But it’s not easy either. We will be saying good-bye to family and friends that we are used to seeing frequently. We are taking on a huge risk that, while totally cool, is also a little scary.

In spite of all of that, the traveling arrangements, the dealing with people, the insane amount of hours
in the car driving hither and yon, the good-byes and see you laters, all the scary bits, and all the big
decisions we will be making in the coming weeks, I can’t wait. I wish we could leave tomorrow and get
started. Instead I will suck it up and get the travel planning done, knowing that what I do today will
make our journey easier tomorrow (or whatever day we leave). And maybe hope that my sister will
magically show up and take care of all the arrangements for me.