I know I should back up to where we left off in Ireland in March. I should tell our stories about hiking in the French Alps with Maisie, Bear’s sister from another mister. I should write about falling in love with the land of thistles and unicorns (even though I tried so so hard not to), or about the wow-factor of Athens and the please-don’t-make-me-leave effect of Santorini.

I should deep dive into how I felt watching Wyatt disappear out of sight at 5:00 a.m. at the airport in Amsterdam as he set off with a one-way-ticket back to the States and a mission to live out the summer of his dreams on his own terms.

“Trust me, Mom. I’m gonna be fine,” he said with a practiced eyeroll and a patronizing head nod.

And, I should write about how it feels now that he’s gone — a strange cocktail of pride, relief, gratitude, longing, and absolute panic; a steady IV drip of all the feels, all the time.

I should find words to describe the enchantment that became of an unexpected week of mother/son travel with only Hudson. I should write about how he chose Berlin and Rome as our destinations.

“Trust me, Molly. That’s where I want to go,” he assured me.

(Yes, Hudson now calls me Molly. Don’t get me started. I can’t even.)

I should craft some delicate paragraph that might allow me to share with you the awe of standing beside him while staring up at Michelangelo’s masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel, or of walking together through the Colosseum in the footsteps of Roman gladiators, or of pacing beside remnants of the Berlin Wall and through the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, trying to wrap our brains around their histories. Or I should write about the simple joy that was sharing idle chitchat over dinner near the Spanish Steps in a scene plucked straight from a painting.

I definitely should. And I probably could. But I don’t want to.

Oddly, this time I don’t have a clear sense of why. Usually, I’ll be the first to admit that laziness is the obvious culprit stepping on my toes when I’m blissfully box-stepping to No Thanks, Rather Not, but I don’t get the sense that’s the case this time (at least, not entirely anyway).

Chapter Two began in a blaze of transatlantic flights and new adventures, new countries, new plans. I assured friends and family I’d keep writing the words and sharing the stories. By the time mid-March rolled around, I’d shared exactly one.

It feels like a lifetime has happened in the four months since then, but I can’t bring myself to want to write coherently about any of it. (I can’t even bring myself to post on Instagram about most of it.)

(More on all that in a sec.) 

We knew this shooting star we were riding across the sky would disappear sometime before the end of summer. When we landed at Heathrow in January, we knew we had six months of burn time left, at most. Six month with Wyatt in our clutches. Six months to explore Europe as a family of four. Six months left to figure out where we’d attempt to call home for two years so Hudson could — at his own insistence — finish high school in a “real” school.

"Trust me, Molly. It’s all gonna work out,” swore John whenever I started to panic that time was running out.

Well, friends — while I was busy panicking and not-writing, our great ball of sky-fire was steadily chewing up the atmosphere.

Before Wyatt’s Mutiny in May, we crushed a good chunk of the UK together and crossed off a handful of Western European highlights. But it’s August now and Wyatt’s already been a long time gone, busy working full-time and being 18 in Park City — road tripping to SoCal with friends and couch-surfing his way through the homes, hearts, and dinner tables of his/our obscenely generous friends.

“Trust us, Molly. We’ll take good care of him,” they promised. (Though I had no doubts.)

The remaining three-quarters of our crew managed to luck into a month housesitting in Devon, England, and somehow scored a visit from Carson and Jamie, two highlights of Boat Life in Mexico.

We did England’s West Country proud, right before our cosmic ride got sidetracked by a unicorn and burned out over a field of thistles in Scotland.

Remember when I said, “More on that in a sec”? Here we go.

The amount of unwritten words and never-posted photos recapping our past four months makes me blurry-eyed. As I sit here wondering, “why, if not for laziness, am I so averse to writing them,” I’ve come to wonder if it isn’t because writing that part of the story effectively ends that part of the story. Giving it a beginning and a middle invariably necessitates writing an ending. To organize our recent events into paragraphs of memories is to tell a story about things that once happened but are now finished happening because new things are about to happen.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all-in on the things-that-once-happened and the new-things-are-about-to-happen parts. But I’m having a wee hiccup getting past the part about things-that-are-finished-happening.

Because I’m not finished with those things.

I’m not finished with the part where we travel together as a family of four, arguing about beds and bathrooms and what to have to dinner. I’m not finished with the part where I never have to shop alone because Wyatt is always game to come along. And, even though I thought I was, I’m actually not finished with the part where the dull roar of Wyatt and Hudson’s constant bickering permeates the otherwise pleasant soundscape of my existence.

As maddening as the presence of that incessant growling is in realtime, I’m finding its absence even more disturbing.   

So instead of adding pages of tales of The End of the Wyatt Era, I’m leaving that space mostly blank. (Not to take credit for a Mensa-level revelation here, but I don’t have to turn the page if there isn’t a page to turn.) Hopefully, this slightly awkward but intentional whitespace will serve as a blatant and open invitation for the part about The Good Ol’ Days to pick up right where it left off any time it chooses. The promising news is that for the first time in over three years, we’re pretty easy to find should that part ever come looking for us. (Hint hint, Wyatt).

On that note…

Above an art gallery, next door to a pub, across the street from a sushi joint, and smack dab in the middle of Edinburgh, Scotland, is the perfectly wonderful flat we now call home.

Hudson attends a public school a half-mile walk away. He wears a requisite uniform that is not an Adidas track suit but rather a shiny blue tie over a white collared shirt and black slacks.

I invite those of you who know Hudson to take all the time you need with this.

For the first time in over three years, we have a mailing address that is the same as where we actually live. We have a gym membership, Hudson has an Australian barber named Ryan a few blocks down the hill, our clothes are on hangers in closets bigger than a dorm fridge, and our daily routines as closely resemble “normal” as you might now fear they do.

And. I. Love it. Like, I love love it.

This admission is only slightly embarrassing for me — someone who can’t usually fathom: 

1) how traveling the world full-time and living in constant motion isn’t everyone’s idea of a perfect life, and 

2) why anyone would choose to live in a cold damp climate like Scotland when places like — oh, I don’t know — SANDY BEACHES WITH SUNSHINE exist.

Before our first visit to Scotland back in March, I was very much prepared to loathe everything about it (based entirely on my understanding of its unapologetically quitter attitude toward hosting warm sunny days (or really even about hosting the sun at all)). True to what I’ve come to embrace as Scottish form, Scotland was unfazed by my apparently-misguided standoffishness.

After a 12-night roadtrip loop around the country followed by a week-long housesit in Edinburgh, I was a convert.

Considering I still wear a North Face puffy coat most days (in late-summer, mind you), this particular reformation seems near biblical.

One of the things I love about travel is its ability to turn my world upside down — floor me with ohmygod moments. Travel makes me a fearless optimist, a dreamer. It makes me curious, interested, engaged.

Travel gives me the confidence to think I know all the answers, then chucks my ego off the nearest cliff and tells me to rethink my questions.

Over and over again.

To count number of times over the decades that travel has taken my breath away and left me wide-eyed and bewildered would be impossible.

I shouldn’t be surprised anymore by how often I’m surprised. The more I travel, the more it happens. Still, if you’d have asked me in February what I thought my odds of living in Scotland were (let alone loving Scotland), I’d have assured you that the odds of me winning a Grammy would be better.

I for sure could’ve been on board with a Grammy win for Best New Non-Singer/Songwriter, but Scotland had other plans.

Scotland had the Isle of Skye and Oban and Lochness and highland cows. Scotland had Harry Potter vibes and miles of accessible public trails and over 17 hours of sun daylight in June. Scotland had friendly people and 22 million pubs and a three-bedroom flat in Edinburgh that is positioned within a six-minute walk from an actual castle on a hill and as close to a TK Maxx as I should ever be allowed to live.

(Uh-huh — TK is TJ’s identical European twin. Be still my heart. And wallet.)  

There’s definitely an element of sorcery at play in this country.

I don’t know how else to explain the fact that a (relatively) cold, usually-forecast-to-be-raining city with the worst margaritas infiltrated my flip-flop-and-tank-top-wearing tequila-loving soul. That said, my first clue might have been upon discovering that Scotland’s national flower is the Scottish thistle. That’s right — a thistle. Literally a regulated noxious weed, spiky as all get out, that can grow over eight feet tall and four feet wide.

I know. It’s a lot. But hold up just a sec, because Scotland is the gift that keeps on giving. 

There’s more. 

The Scots’ have chosen the unicorn as their national animal. I kid you not — unicorns, with their rainbow farts that smell like candy and all. (Presumably.)

Now I’m not here to throw stones. Quite the opposite in fact.

I’m as big a fan of roses and bald eagles as the next American, but if thistles and unicorns are ever on the ballot, I’ll be the first to fill in those checkboxes with glitter ink hearts and cast my vote of enthusiastic support.

My point — any population who proudly embraces giant, spiky, purple-headed weeds and unicorns as symbolic of who they were, who they are, and who they strive to be, is a population I’d like to spend some quality time getting to know.

Two years is ticking on this particular get-to-know-you timer. Two years to casually replace “hi” with “hiya,” “thanks” with “cheers,” and “little” with “wee.”

(That last one is my top priority. Obviously.) 

Two years to reacquaint our wee toes with rain boots and our now tan-less arms with shirtsleeves. Two years of pub crawls from our front door and £100 flights to Morocco for three-day weekends (I hope). Two years to get used to being three instead of four.

Two years before we are two instead of three and I have to remember to leave more whitespace in the story for Hudson.

I think we’ve got this.

I mean, living in a land symbolically represented by a tower-sized flowering weed and a uni-horned horse, it seems safe to assume some inherent ferocity of spirit at least partly defines its people.

We want in on that action.

Over our next 24 months as honorary Scots, I’m prepared for the nature of travel to keep slapping me upside the head with OMG. I’m ready to let everything I think I know about everything continue to be flipped inside out and I’m ready to be just a bit less surprised each time. (Please don’t tell the Scots I just referred to ourselves as Honorary Scots.)

We’re ready to show Wyatt the Hard Rock Cafe around the corner and the Louis Vuitton store at the other end of our cobblestoned alley (named Thistle Street).

And, we’re ready to share this Scottish sorcery with friends and family.

(Speaking of whom — to any of you blogcore legends out there, still inexplicably committed to making it past the final words of my losing battles against brevity — pack a raincoat and come say hi!)

Not unlike the spiny stalk of an eight-foot-tall thistle or the spiral of gold on a unicorn’s horn, the magic here can seem tough to put a finger on. But the thing about thistles and unicorns is that they’re more than willing to help you try.

If you haven’t recently, I hope you have a chance to find your own OMG, or come share some of ours. I speak from personal experience when I assure you —

good things happen the moment you’re willing to grab a bouquet of violet spikes and slide headfirst down the rainbow of a unicorn-fart that smells a wee bit like Skittles.

Trust me.

The post Trust Me [#44] appeared first on BEAM REACH ADVENTURES.

(Unless the feelings are referring to my new-found love of scones and the excuses are directly related to why it’s OK that I now eat them like it’s my dream job.)

Clearly, this serves as another not-so-subtle indication of my ineptitudes as even a pseudo-writer. But, since my mom and like 20 4 friends made me promise these stories would live to see the next page, here I am — staring into the more-words abyss and wondering if a scone would help dull the pain.

(The scone does actually seem to be helping, so afterword it is.)

On November 13, 2021, we — the beleaguered former crew of SV Ruby Vi — boarded a one-way flight from PVR to LAX. Saying goodbye to both friends we adored and to the life and the dream we gave up our whole world to chase.

To say it’s been difficult to reconcile the decision to sacrifice so much in pursuit of The Boat Dream with our decision to set it aside, unfinished and incomplete, would be a gross understatement.

For me, it’s been nearly impossible. Mostly because I don’t really think the outcomes of these two choices can be reconciled. Instead, in a thinly-veiled attempt at self-preservation, I’ve convinced myself they don’t have to be.

When we traded landlife for boatlife, we knew failure — in a thousand different forms — was a distinct possibility probability. We knew we might want to kill each other after a month. We knew the kids would miss out on “normal” teenager things. We knew our attempted circumnavigation might get cut short.

We knew the dream might fall apart at any given moment. But we did it anyway.

We did it believing that the many failures we’d inevitably face while in motion were more palatable than the one failure of standing still — of watching this opportunity drift by without at least casting a line to try to reel it in.

In hindsight, our stumbles seem almost blinding. Each is I-told-you-so fodder for sideline neigh-sayers.

What I can’t see though, is just how garish the failure of never trying might have been.

Of course, there’s a chance it would’ve existed simply as an indistinct blur in our periphery, nothing more than an irritating blindspot our brains would eventually teach our eyes to ignore.

But I think the one failure we didn’t choose would’ve weighed even heavier on us in the long run than the pile of those we did. That one defeat alone would’ve inevitably taken root and spread like a weed around us — out of place and unwanted, a noxious and debilitating reminder of the time we were too scared of getting lost to hike without a trail.

So I won’t be reconciling our choices, or wins, or losses. Chapter One’s pluses and minuses will not be consolidated into a PMI chart to make anyone (but mostly me) feel better about its outcome.

Instead, like the for-better-or-worse family journey we intended it to be, and the collection of subpar short stories it became, Chapter One will, in fact, just be.

It will be some of the things we did and some things we didn’t. It will be some of the choices we made and some of the lessons we learned (and re-learned). It will be the people we missed and the people we met. Chapter One will be sand and sweat and love and triumph; it will be cabbage and Catan and tequila and backgammon; it will also be tears and terror and loss and devastation.

Maybe one day, it will become something a whole lot less or maybe even a little bit more.

But we’ll leave that for One Day to figure out.

Sweet dreams, Chapter One. Until we meet again…

If by some small chance, the great mess of all this being and the threat of future becoming hasn’t already scared you away (and the paragraphs preceding this one haven’t already convinced you that cleaning your toilets would be a more enjoyable task than reading any more of these words),

please allow me to humbly welcome you to Chapter Two.

Today is March-something, 2022. John’s on a business call in the next room; the boys are deep in a conversation I can’t follow (despite absolutely zero effort) about a video game — something about the merits of an R301 vs an alternator; and beside them, two impossibly cute dogs are sharing an armchair with enviable contentment.

At present, home for us is the quaint little Irish town of Ballymore-Eustace, about 45-minutes south of Dublin.

One morning in early-February, while sipping coffee and Google-surfing from our flat in southwest London (I realize that makes us sound way fancier than we are), we stumbled upon the web-based pet- and house-sitting platform, TrustedHousesitters. And, since a write-our-story-as-we-go approach is our working M.O., we signed up.

Within a few days, we booked two dreamy “sits.” The first — 18 days in Ireland through the end of March; the second — two weeks in the French Alps in mid/late-April.

Those of you who knew Bear, either in real life or through photos and stories, might see how we knew deep in our Bear-grieving hearts that we belonged in these places with these sweet pups.                      

We’re nearly a month into our stay in Ireland, and have just one week left caring for two fur babies who’ve stolen our hearts. They’re every bit as soul-filling as we thought they’d be and are reminding us daily about everything we loved and miss about “normal” life.

But before we were rediscovering the joys of “normal” here in County Kildare, we were whirlwind-roadtripping around this land of Guinness and green.

Ireland showed up dressed to impress.

Since the moment we touched down in Dublin, this country has proven herself to be everything I never dreamed she would be: utterly spectacular.

The Garth Brooks song that describes Ireland as, “rolling fields of green and fences made of stone,” pretty much nails it. Add in: “sheep forever, the skinniest roads, castle remains on every horizon, more pubs per square kilometer than people to fill them, colorful storefronts, the most delicious scones, and the kindest people,” and you’d really have yourself a spot-on Irish ditty.

So far, Ireland is the gift that keeps on giving.

A sampling of our highlights includes: watching glass become Waterford Crystal in Waterford, drinking Guinness on tap everywhere, hiking with a sheep farmer in County Kerry, watching Irish Working Sheepdogs work in County Kildare, driving the Ring of Kerry, riding out storms on the Dingle Peninsula, drooling over the Cliffs of Moher, exploring castle remains and 1000-year-old churches, strolling through streets and alleys of the most colorful towns, celebrating birthdays in Galway, betting (and winning) on horses in Naas, and falling madly in love with two four-legged three-year-old sisters.

And Ireland isn’t finished with us yet.

If I’d known just how rad Ireland would be, I might’ve been less sad to leave Amsterdam to get here.

Amsterdam is what happened when a week in mid-February offered, what we Wilcox girls like to call, A Christmas Sister Miracle. Our ragtag crew jumped at the chance to Chunnel our way under the English Channel, across the French countryside, through Belgium, and right into the heart of Amsterdam.

Lest you wonder what's so miracle-y about a London bullet train to Amsterdam — as of Thanksgiving, my sister and her family live in Amsterdam. 

Sisters Together in Random Places at Random Times equals Christmas Sister Miracle. Full stop.

(You'll just have to roll with the Christmas part and believe me when I assure you that Christmastime miracles are decidedly more miracle-y than miracles in, say, September. 

So obviously, if you really want to convey extreme miracle-y-ness, you'd best tack on Christmas as a choice adjective. 

(Plus, one time we just said it that way and it stuck, 'cause that’s what happens with sisters.)  

On Day Two, my practically-Dutch-already sister straight up drop-kicked me into the wilds of Amsterdam cycling — during rush hour — which, by some sorcery, did not lead to my untimely death (or even a flesh wound). Later, my bother-in-law introduced us to the thrill of mobile-ordering gigantic 20-dollar crêpes filled with Nutella and strawberries at 8:00 p.m. and then blew our minds when he sent us to the front door moments later to greet the rain-soaked warrior on a scooter faithfully delivering these three-pound sweet beasts to the palms of our hands.

(PSA — It’s best to slow-roll through a post-crêpe day wearing sweatpants and a loose-fitting top. #totallyworthit)

Once our jeans fit again, we walked to tiny markets and also to bigger markets. The boys found a Dunkin’ Donuts around the corner. We pedaled to and from my nephew’s preschool for drop-offs and pick-ups. We even hunkered down for a day and a night while Storm Eunice battered us (and the UK and most of Western Europe) with 70+ mph winds.

We gawked at 300-year-old canal-front homes and wandered in and out of upscale Rodeo Drive-esque boutiques on P.C. Hooftstraat, carefully not-touching the shirts (and wallets and belts and scarves) with price tags steeper than my first car.

We sipped coffees on the couch and drank champagne on the canal.

Christmas Sister Miracles are my favorite.

Amsterdam was everything wonderful (and then some) I knew it would be.

And it’s a good thing, too, because getting there required prying ourselves away from London, which, after 16 action-packed days and nights spent feasting on British Wow and Wonder, was admittedly a little bit rough.

On the evening of January 29th, we left the States on a redeye flight bound for London. Ten hours later, we touched down and soon provided our airport driver with a chance to set a new PR for most pieces of luggage crammed into his 8-passenger van. London went for the shutout from there and won at everything: decadent bakeries, vibrant flower stands, funky old pubs, Chelsea’s über-hip shops, insane talent in the West End, and over-the-top opulence at Harrods.

London wouldn’t quit.

We walked all the miles and loved all the things: the tube, the bridges, the museums, the Crown Jewels, the Cliffs of Dover, freaking Stonehenge…

Over and over again, London delivered.

As our first stop in Europe, London was merely a happy accident. Though it was always on our list of must-visits, it only became the starting point for our European travels after a search for direct flights from LAX to Literally Anywhere in Europe damn-near handed us Heathrow on a silver platter.

To be clear, by "handed us Heathrow,” I mean, for a total of four one-way tickets direct from LAX to LHR, we paid precisely 90,000 frequent flyer miles and $68 dollars in taxes and fees. Total. 

So, London First was a bit of a no-brainer.

London, it turns out, is also my favorite.

As an aside, if you happen to have a flat in the city that needs minding (or, for that matter, a castle in the countryside), I’m your huckleberry. 

But before we were awarding London every conceivable trophy, we were basking in friend and family bliss in the States. After parting ways with Ruby Vi in November, and for the two-and-a-half months that followed, we gorged ourselves on the overwhelming generosity of our family and friends.

Our heroes didn’t just show up for us when we called, they were waiting for us when we arrived — an emergency kit of humans we didn’t know we needed to heal what ailed us.

They loaned us their cars and condos, showered us with gifts and winter clothes. They invited us to dinners and hosted gatherings, reintroducing us to the life we pressed pause on three years ago. Without hesitation, they devoted enormous chunks of their time and resources to us — willingly placing their own lives on hold while they tended to the chaos of ours.

We devoured every bite of the love buffet they set out for us, until finally, fat and happy once more, we said goodbye. Again.

And off we went, searching for the next few pages of a story we weren’t sure we were ready to read, let alone write.

To date, it’s been four months since we pivoted from sea to shore.

Our tans have long since faded away; our bathing suits are buried deep in our luggage; I can’t remember the last time we happy hour’d with margaritas. Sunglasses no longer shade our eyes from the sun so much as shield them from the frosty European wind that turns my tear ducts into faucets each time I step outside. My toes are mostly resigned to wearing socks and boots now and, although my fingers are tolerating their new gloves-requirement with notable compliance, invariably, at least four of them turn to ice whenever I’m outside longer than seven minutes at a time.

But I’ll damned if 11 weeks of unfettered time with my mom in SoCal, and two weeks of friend-love in Park City, and watching Wyatt and Hudson belly-laugh/cry through The Book of Mormon in London, and sipping champagne on a canal boat with my sister in Amsterdam, and watching the sun set from atop the Cliffs of Moher with my family in Ireland isn’t making the first few pages of this tequila-less, eye-watering, frostbitten chapter worth the relative discomforts it seems keen on inflicting.

(Snuggling a three-day-old lamb is helping a wee bit as well.) 

It’s pissing rain today in our perfect little patch of Small-Town, Ireland, and, more often than seems necessary, ornery gusts of wind slam sheets of aforementioned rain-piss against the floor-to-ceiling panels of kitchen windows. I’m sitting on a swivel stool wearing socks and slippers, long pants, a scarf, and a puffy coat. A hot cup of tea and a half-eaten cherry scone on the counter beside me offer condolences I shamelessly accept.

Don’t get me wrong — I wouldn’t turn down the chance to drop anchor in a warm sunny cove off a white sandy beach again, but lately, the view from shore is downright impossible to complain about (at least for most of us).

And, it all has me thinking…

Maybe it’s not so bad to not be on a boat — I mean, at least for a chapter or two.

(Please don't tell Ruby Vi.)

The post Chapter Two — Don’t Tell Ruby Vi [#43] appeared first on BEAM REACH ADVENTURES.

(I realize it seems like there’s an adverb missing up there — some forgotten qualifier, confirmation of my lazy proofreading, or perhaps simply of my general disregard for the confines of proper sentence structure.)

It’s true that I can’t stand proofreading and also that I care nothing for complete sentences, but I assure you, exactly zero words are missing from the tail of that first line.

The end of this chapter feels. Period.

I ache for a triumphant last lap, for a slow-motion-worthy leap off of this page and onto the next. I’m trying to remember why we did this, how we’ve grown, who we’ve met, where we’ve been; a desperate effort to somehow quantify our last 31 months as a collection of grand adventures, worthy of everything we sacrificed to make it happen.

I'm struggling.

The Good Things highlight reel exists — I’ve written about most of it — but the only show streaming in my head these days more closely resembles some tragic docudrama than the feel-good epic-adventure flick we paid for. Due in large part, I suppose, to the fact that October nearly broke us (but mostly me).

Soul Crushing Trauma Story #1:

Those of you connected to BEAM REACH ADVENTURES on social media perhaps know intimately the story of how a day-old duckling drowning near our marina slip in late-July, came to be Rose — an impossibly sweet member of our family. (If you’re not on social media, that’s pretty much the gist.) In a nutshell, Rose was my shadow.

The genetic programming that makes imprinting a real event that happens in real life between real creatures is remarkable. 

Science for the win. 

For 11 weeks, I had a duck-daughter named Rose and I loved her an exaggerated amount.

We never intended to keep Rose, simply to spare her from certain death, provide her a safe place to recover, and then reunite her with another young whistling duck family nearby. But the whistling ducks and ducklings we’d spent all of June and July admiring, up and disappeared come early-August. Like, literally disappeared.

Fast forward seven weeks later.

Having outgrown her plastic Home Depot tote bin, Rose enjoys full-time access to the run of the boat during the day and takes over the entire guest cabin each night. The owner of the feed store one town over knows my “order” by memory, and employees here at the marina and the resort make it a priority to say hi to Rose when they pass by.

By week eight, I’m jogging down the dock in flip flops, squealing overly-exuberant words of encouragement and praise like a goober at my duck-toddler as she spreads her wings and takes flight for the first time.

It's possible my eyes leaked a little.

At 10 weeks, Rose rules the roost. She preens Bear, demands to be held for her afternoon naps, requires an audience for bath time, and refuses to join us on walks — choosing instead to wait defiantly on the lifelines or bow pulpits of neighboring boats until we return. She prefers the comforts of air-conditioning, Netflix after dinner, and, true to her breed, whistles for me with preteen melodrama if I ask her to wait outside in the cockpit.

But a regular-sized duck who can fly is not — as some members of my family argued — a favorable addition to 180 square feet of already-shared-by-four-people common space. 

And thus, my longish moment of duck-mom glory came to an abrupt halt. 

Do not let the severity of my personal trauma in this moment lead you to believe Rose’s rehoming caused her any suffering in the least. Far from it. She now lives in an open-aired home in La Cruz with two humans, a pair of ducks, a few dogs, a rescued opossum, and a small green parrot. She instantly fell in love with her new mom, Kat — (science FTW, again) — and continues to wield her Needy-Duck power over her new kingdom with unbridled persistence. She’s living her best (domestic) life and is loved beyond compare.

The heading, Soul Crushing Trauma #2, doesn’t begin to adequately describe the deep, writhing, oxygen-sucking, blow that gutted us just days after our farewell to Rose.

On the evening of October 13th, after a valiant six-month battle with lymphoma, Bear died.

I want so badly to write that another way -- to say she left us, or we lost her, or to tell you she crossed the Rainbow Bridge -- but I just can't.    

There are words to describe the magnitude of this loss and the immensity of the planet-sized crater Bear’s absence has left in our lives, but I don’t have the emotional endurance to use them quite yet.

If you knew Bear, or you know us, you probably don’t need my words anyway. She deserves much more than I have the fortitude to offer right now, so I’m just gonna leave this one right here, raw and unfinished, until I do.

Finally, October the Destroyer is marching toward its god forsaken end. And, as we prepare to leave Ruby Vi and brace for yet another round of goodbyes, I’m spinning in a what-have-we-done vortex.

I’m wondering how two tear ducts produced enough salt water in a month to dehydrate a fully grown woman. I’m wondering what will become of my empty heartspace — of the vacancies left behind in the wake of goodbyes I was ill-prepared to make and barely strong enough to survive.

I'm wondering if any of it was worth any of it. 

It’s a ridiculous self-dialogue — debilitating at best, destructive at worst. My brain knows the way out, knows this heartache and doubt will pass. I know there’s much to look forward to in both our transition months ahead with family and friends and in our next big leap across the Atlantic. I know that the novelty of not-always-sweating and eggnog lattes and well-behaved toilets will carry my spirits on golden wings for at least a week and that hugging our people will set right what feels wrong these days. I’m sure I also know all the reasons these last few years of Boat Life were worth (almost) every sacrifice we made along the way.

What's the saying? Don't lose sight of the forest for the trees? Keep perspective. Focus on the big picture. Stay the course... 

Then again, the trees are the forest, aren’t they?

The laughter and friendships, the bliss and freedom often stood tall enough to shade the sadness and struggle. But a tree in the shade is no less a tree than one basking in the sunlight. The pain, the sacrifices, the losses, all the goddamn goodbyes are as much a part of our story as the endless stretches of soft white sand and cocktails in coconuts — they just aren’t as much fun to write about, or live through.

We’re only a couple of weeks away from the literal end of this figurative chapter and I keep thinking a big beautiful finish is the only appropriate way to mark such an occasion.

I'm a fool, obviously. 

The writer in me wants to control the narrative, to mess about with the jumble of words on the page the way Hudson does with a Rubik’s cube — just a few moments of effortless yet deliberate manipulation until, seemingly out of nowhere, all the chaos behaves in mesmerizingly precise patterns.

I want the last page to paint us a masterpiece, some tangible illustration of the Sailboat Magic we pulled from a tophat.

Of course that only works if you’re an actual writer who writes stories born from your own brain. It most definitely does not work if you’re me. I may be the one typing these paragraphs, but I am certainly not the author of this tale. At this point, trying to be is proving frustratingly futile. So I’m stuck riding out my tear-induced dehydration and bracing myself for more goodbyes ahead.

For the past few years, we’ve tried to keep relative focus on the big picture, on how the chapter reads as a whole. We’ve written off our proverbial (and my literal) typos as life’s lessons and tried to turn otherwise dull days into syndicated scenes we could at least laugh about later.

Only this time, I can’t seem to figure out how to turn words into daylight, how to brighten up these last few pages we’re slogging through in the dark. I’m trying to be ok with that, to just accept that sometimes chapters end without fanfare or plot resolution. After all, the end of an episode can croon a sad song just as easily as it can lay down a crowd pleasing Stones’ cover. As I trip and stumble my way through the melancholy, I’m straining to adjust my ears to the minor riff I hear rather than rewrite it to the four-chord progression I know by heart.

Even though right now it feels like the only one, this chapter is just that — a chapter. One of many in our life’s story.

(Hopefully, its anticlimactic ending when the mom cries, doesn't stain the earlier pages when she was clearly a pillar of controlled and stoic strength.) 

The challenge remains — how do we hold close the drone’s eye view of our forest while trekking the last mile on painfully solid ground? While we’re slogging our way across the homestretch of the damp and muddy forest floor, scrambling over errant roots beneath the shady shorties, what becomes of those dreamy hues of blues and greens and the liquid gold dripping from the perfect, sunshine-stealing treetops high above us?

And what happens in two weeks when we make it out of the woods? Undoubtedly, I’ll still be clutching a messy pile of words, all the feels, and half a mind to shape the lot of it into a Pulitzer. But what if I just set it all down instead? What if I let the run-on sentences and all the emotions just spill out haphazardly around us as we walk ourselves off the page? What if this time, we let the mess just be a mess: the gut-wrenching goodbyes, the maybes, the doubt, the broken hearts. What if we just leave the disaster wherever it falls and keep going?

Can we let the dark space punctuate this end? 

Or rather, is there any way we can't? 

Like my three-year-old nephew will tell you it’s best to do with bees, perhaps we just need to give October a little space.

As much as I loathed October, I’m still pretty curious to find out what happens in November — a glutton for punishment perhaps. But that’s the thing about a story — if you want to keep reading it, you have to be willing to turn the page.

So that’s that, I suppose — October the Cruel manages to bully its way into the chapter before it ends. (And, because 67 94% of my personality leans toward (slightly) controlling, I’ll pretend I had a choice in the matter.)

This month demanded we lose sight of the forest and stop to actually stare at the trees.

It forced us to wade thru the muck, the decay, the shadows — to shift our attention away from the master plan and really get down and dirty with the minutia.

Turns out, there is some gnarly sh!t going on down here at ground level.  

Blessedly, there are some glimmers of hope beginning to appear on our horizon: my mom’s first visit to Ruby Vi, a week’s staycation at the ocean-side penthouse of generous friends, the early arrival of a couple of college acceptance letters for Wyatt… A bit of light at the end of this tunnel of trees?

I doubt I’ll be able to convince myself that messy endings are a fine way to close a chapter, or that the view from the top isn’t one worth continually striving for, but at least this walkabout in the dank and dreary woods doesn’t seem to have fully destroyed us (yet), despite its absurdly dedicated attempts.

Now’s about the time when I like to swaddle a post in a comfy, feel-good blankie and return it safely to our usual cruising altitude and the glossy view from above.

But, begrudgingly, we still have a few more miles to trek down here before the we clear the thicket: more goodbyes, more last times, more tear duct management. It won’t be a photo-finish as we emerge from the tree line — neither perfectly timed plot twist nor crescendo of rising action will carry us into the next chapter.

We'll turn the page anyway.

I hope eventually we’ll be willing to look back, past my wake of unwritten words, beyond where our muddy footprints finally emerged from the darkness. I hope we’ll muster the courage to peer beneath the sunny canopy until our eyes adjust to the tangled jungle of shadows it hides. Maybe then, we’ll begin to reclaim a little of what October stole.

Maybe the massive chunk of our hearts it ripped out and callously tossed aside, will — like everything else on the forest floor — reinvent itself as something new.

In time, maybe we’ll find it growing as a memory — of sweet Bear rolling in a shady patch of green after a long and important shift on iguana-watch, or perhaps of Rose’s formidable whistle, reminding us, and the world, that she’s the one running the show.

Until then, we’ll keep walking towards the sunshine, tossing aside words, feeling the feels, and doing our best to ignore the ever-expanding mess as we go.

When he’s older, I’ll have to remember to thank my favorite little beekeeping toddler for his sage advice.

Because, like his honeybees, I think our own October Swarm (and its excruciatingly sharp stingers) just needs a little space.

For Bear and Tuga Lou and those who loved them so

The post Give the Bees Some Space [#42] appeared first on BEAM REACH ADVENTURES.

I was raised in the era of jelly bracelets and stirrup pants, Cabbage Patch Kids and Care Bears. The teenagers I idolized as a grade schooler rocked spiral perms and mall bangs with hairband confidence — a fitting complement to their head-to-toe acid-washed denim ensembles and fingerless fishnet gloves.

When school ended each June, long summer days in the Pacific Northwest melted into short summer nights and,

like hot fudge on soft serve, offered up nine weeks of the most magnificent syrupy-sweet adolescent soul food a kid could be so lucky to indulge in.

Ear-piercing mom-whistles echoed throughout most of Budd Bay around dinnertime each evening, and all who intended to be fed knew immediately to cease and desist present activities and redirect any remaining energy into an all-out sprint home.

There would not be a second whistle.

For all that I can remember, I loved my childhood — and I especially loved summers. I loved the power of make-believe that effortlessly transformed “behind the neighbor’s garage” simultaneously into both a Rare-Gemstone Mine and Josh’s Prison Cell. (Liza and I are super sorry about that, Josh.) I loved the guaranteed comedic blunders of our annual multi-family Dads’ Hikes. I loved that, while neither a skilled singer nor dancer, I had a role in nearly every community theater production with kids in the cast from fourth grade until high school. And, despite an entirely non-existent collection of trophies or ribbons to show for it, I loved playing sports.

Then one day, without warning — at least none I noticed at the time — nothing remained of the chocolatey soft serve soup of my youth, save a few sticky drips dribbled down my chin.

Apparently, like the pro that I am, I’d spent 18 solid years licking that ice cream bowl clean like my awesome life depended on it.

Years later, drunk on a potent cocktail of ignorance and ego, I blindly stumbled into the ranks of parenthood, confident that John and I would inherently raise creative, self-reliant, active children whose upbringing would largely mirror the wild-child freedom of our own.

What a fool.

If the fact that I never managed to ace the neighborhood mom-whistle was the first clue I recklessly ignored as to the inevitable failures on my parenting horizon, the proliferation of participation ribbons throughout all aspects of Wyatt and Hudson’s early childhood was likely the second.

Should we just take a moment here to acknowledge how every one of us who remembers Life Before PlayStation abhors the very concept of participation ribbons? Because we do, don't we? 

Their mere existence represents a counter strike against the essence of our parents’ parenting strategy — which, as far as I can tell, seemed wholly centered around only two directives:

1) Play outside regardless of the weather

2) Ignore all injuries shy of visibly broken bones or actively gushing blood

Our parents were free-range parenting long before Free-Range Parenting had a name (or a Facebook group or discussion boards or multi-page conversation threads on Google).

So how then, did a BandAid-free generation of outdoorsy misfits with questionable fashion sense become parents to a cohort of participation-ribbon-toting, outside-averse, videogame-addicted teenagers?

(There are exceptions, of course, and I know and adore several of these humans -- both parents and kids alike -- who have escaped this plight either by sheer will or luck.) 

But I am not one of them. And neither are my kids, dammit!

When we sold everything to move aboard Ruby Vi, we had to make some tough choices about what to toss and what to keep. At the time, for as much literal clutter as 17 years of married life had created, the curated collection of 15 years’ worth of kids’ projects (and drawings and report cards and dough ornaments and homework assignments and and and) was second to none. And you know what tipped that already-heaping pile of clutter right on its side? A trashy treasure trove of approximately 300 ribbons, plastic trophies, and fake gold medals.

Lest you think the vastness of this collection was a testament to our children’s athletic prowess, let me assure you, it was not. (Sorry, kids.)

Nope nope nope — these were prizes just for showing up.

In a move I’m not necessarily proud of, I tossed 99% of the finger-painted relics of the boys’ early-childhood and literally every single generic plastic trophy with “Way to Go!” crookedly fake-etched across the bottom.

It’s now been a handful of years since any of us has stood within shouting distance of a participation ribbon — our longest absence to date since those hideous strips of glorified craft ribbon first paraded past our children’s eager eyes. And you know what? Lately, an unexpected bout of personal reflection has led me to reconsider the harshness of my criticism. (More on that in a sec.)

But first a confession…

I’ve struggled with how to best share the second half of this post.

(Which perhaps explains why I've spent so many words meandering between memories of soft serve summers in the '80s and the inexcusable rise of Everyone's a Winner parenting in the '00s. Though, per usual, I have every intention of eventually tying it all together for you.)

So, with that, I guess I’ll just pick up where our last post left off in June…

For (another) summer spent tied to a dock, we sure had a wild one — visits and visitors and good times with new friends among the most notable highlights.

We even had a hurricane roll through in late-August (which, as we understand it, was the first to come this far into the bay in over 20 years — go figure). So that alone upped the excitement level around here for a hot minute.

But we’ve also had an awful lot of time to plan, and to consider where and how we go from here.

When we left Park City in May of 2019, we gave ourselves three-point-five years to attempt to hustle-sail our way around the globe. We knew we’d likely need an extra year and we also knew that even at four-and-a-half years, our timeline was a tight squeeze at best. But, if we wanted the kids to be a part of the whole journey — which we did — this was the time we had to work with before they outgrew us and took off in search of new (and presumably cooler) roommates with less gray hair and, according to Wyatt, better taste in music.

From COVID’s onset, a mess of related border closures garbled our route. But it wasn’t until late-2020, that it finally crapped all over our timeline.

There are absolutely alternative routes to sail across the Pacific Ocean without going through French Polynesia, but each involves back-to-back multi-thousand-mile passages and none provides the magic and allure that is the South Pacific.

This summer, we’ve taken continual readings on next year’s border forecasts along our itinerant rhumb line. It’s bleak and getting bleaker. If we were committed to living the rest of our years on a boat, or to the kind of slow-burn circumnav that simply ends when it ends, we could shake off this holdup with Taylor Swift spunk. But we’re not, so we can’t.

(And also, Taylor is deceivingly talented so we might've actually been screwed either way.)

The same hourglass that once held more perfect beach sand than we knew what to do with, is suddenly running dry.

Father Time is a bandit disguised as Forever.

There’s no denying the generosity of the many gifts Time has handed us over the past two-and-a-half years: Be Together, Slow Down, and Stay a While Longer to name a few. But, despite the wrapping paper and pretty bows with which they were presented, each came with a price tag — an IOU being stealthily recorded on a running tab Father Time took the liberty of keeping open for us. Deep down, we knew at some point he’d holler, “Last Call!” and we’d have no choice but to repay him for all those magic moments when we asked him to stand unflinchingly still for us, and he did.

We’re trying hard to channel our teenagers’ super power and blatantly ignore his pestering, but he’s irritatingly persistent.

Our repayment plan is a near spitting image of the charges Boat Life ran up on our tab — a mixed bag of utterly terrifying and ridiculously spectacular.

Wyatt is four months away from turning 18 and, to say he is eager to meet those new good-music-loving roommates, would be an understatement;

John fell into work for an incredible new company on the cutting edge of its industry's global technology;

and Hudson, while still entirely circumnavigation-goal-focused, is less than thrilled about the idea of spending another year in limbo, waiting on the South Pacific to open. 

Boat Life and Boat Time are often an inseparable pair.

Not unlike other famous duos, they frequently cover for each other’s missteps, revealing silver linings when and where we least expect it. This summer’s unplanned pause here in Puerto Vallarta was no exception. When Boat Life first ripped the Sea of Cortez out from under our hulls, we were devastated. But Boat Time soon stepped up to offer us the sweetest consolation prize in the form of family, friends, fajitas, and fiberoptic WiFi.

But now, as the remnants of proverbial chocolate sauce fade from the corners of our kids’ mouths, it’s devastatingly clear that another summer has drawn to a close — an annual tragedy I may never come to fully accept.

Lamenting this loss, we sat in Ruby Vi’s salon and, as the warm Nayarit rain poured down with unnecessary commitment, we wondered…

If Boat Life and Boat Time can turn a sail drive stall-out into a steak taco, maybe we can muster the creativity and courage to turn another year of COVID closures into a pint case of Ben & Jerry’s.

So we did what we do these days — we I ate guacamole and we stared at a map of the world. After a weekend of non-stop brainstorming — and an undisclosed number of avocados — we fell a little bit in love with an idea…

What if we preemptively choose to pause before COVID forces us to? What if we write new rules and new timelines and new itineraries with the sort of audacious abandon that got us here in the first place?

What if we move to Marrakesh? or Prague? What about a year in Copenhagen? Oslo? Florence? Zagreb?

Our list of possibilities suddenly seemed endless and we realized it seemed that way, because it actually was. For the first time in the history of our Ever, we could literally go anywhere.

So that’s what we’re doing — we’re going Anywhere.

Our next Yes isn’t actually too far off from most of our other recent yeses: a yes to travel and exploration; a yes to the unknown, the unpredictable; a yes to New and also to A Little Bit Scary. Even the sting of its requisite Farewells is familiar — knowing we’ll again be leaving people and places and a home we adore.

But this time, thanks to Ruby, we feel a little more prepared to handle it.

Despite our efforts, John and I couldn’t entirely recreate the unadulterated independence of our ’80s adolescence for our own children — such perhaps might be the price of raising kids in a modern and ever-digitalized world.

(It's also maybe because the Xbox rabbit hole is way deeper than we first assumed.) 

But we did get something right when we handed our boys a surrogate hippie mom in Ruby Vi. A parent who, not unlike our own, afforded us the time and space to create, to enjoy, to experience, to imagine, to explore, to choose.

Throughout several decades of adulthood, I’ve taken great pride in knowing that my childhood didn’t come with prizes for attendance.

But now, as I attempt to embrace the age that simple math (and a generous interpretation of current life-expectancy data) informs me is unequivocally Middle Age, I’m taking a closer look at this particular line item on my Self-Righteousness Checklist.

Truth be told, I’m wondering if a participation ribbon now and again isn’t such a bad thing after all. In fairness, nothing actually happens until first we’re willing to show up. That’s certainly when our Boat Dream dream became our Boat Dream reality, and as far as I can tell, it’s also the starting line for just about every life lesson we’ve asked our boys to embrace.

This fall, we’re choosing to pause in order to keep showing up.

We’re choosing to create the time and space for Wyatt to forge his own path into adulthood (on solid ground, as he’s kindly requested). We’re choosing to imagine a year of travel abroad on land rather than mourn the sea ports where COVID has deemed Ruby Vi unwelcome.

We’re choosing to shimmy our way through a break in the fence out back rather than knock indefinitely on the closed door in front of us.

In 2022, we’ll cast ourselves in a new show, on a new set, though with an undeniably recognizable script. After a year or so, we’ll reevaluate the world cruising stage. If we’re lucky enough to rejoin those players, we’ll tour with them once again like the salty stars I think we might be.

But we won’t do it aboard Ruby Vi.

By then, without Wyatt and with only a year or two left with Hudson in our clutches, Ruby will be more boat than we need or care to handle.

So, we’re closing out our current boat tab with Father Time and scarfing down every last taste of Ruby Vi’s would-be endless summer sundae.

Like finishing the last bite of most giant desserts, this one is simultaneously both satisfying and painful — perhaps a bit more of each than we expected.

But, as the newly-feathered fledgings Ruby Vi has helped us become, we’re eager to test our wings.

In true mom-form, she’s raised stronger and more resilient crew than she likely gives herself credit for. And, loathe as all mothers are to admit it, she’s ready to watch us fly.

During our years spent under her wings — living under her sails, traveling aboard her worldly classroom — Ruby Vi shared more life lessons with us than we paid for.

She taught us to keep our eyes and imaginations open wide enough to see far away horizons, 

our egos light enough that they won't shatter when drop-kicked onto a new stage or a new ball field, 

and our voices strong enough to say Yes when it'd be so much easier to say No. 

She’s continually reminded us that it’s both our individual and collective responsibility not only to recognize opportunities, but to search for them — always — especially in the dark spaces, the still moments.

Even in the pouring rain.

Later this fall, we expect to bid our final farewells to The Rubes. Proud though she may be of this family she helped raise, our send off surely won’t include cheap shiny ribbons or a plastic toy trophy to mark the occasion.

But I’ll be damned if I don’t finally appreciate the importance of celebrating the accomplishment that — at least once in a while — is simply the act of showing up.

The post Trophy Not Included [#41] appeared first on BEAM REACH ADVENTURES.

What are you eating?

Why are you awake?

How are you already asleep?

But, invariably, the one that’s asked the most is: “Where’s home?” This one trips me up — every time. Always has.

As a kid, “home” was technically Olympia, Washington, but I always wanted it to be someplace else — somewhere more exciting, more glamorous; somewhere distinctly less-Olympia.

As such, I mostly responded with qualified answers like, “Well, my house is in Olympia, but I go to school in Tacoma.” Or, “Well, I live in Olympia, but I was born in Tucson.”

Ridiculous.

As an adult, I came to own my OlyWa roots but still my mitigations grew longer (and more absurd). Before we moved aboard Ruby Vi, my answer had stretched to something like:

I'm originally from Olympia, but I went to high school in Tacoma and college in Bellingham and then spent a few years in Colorado, where Wyatt was born, before we moved back to Olympia, where Hudson was born, and then eventually to Park City.

I mean — seriously…

In my (albeit weak) defense, narrowing down “home” to simply the town where I grew up — or even my current street address — just never seemed to do the word justice.

If I thought “Where’s home?” was tough to answer back when we actually lived in a bonafide home, traveling the world and living full-time on a sailboat has made this challenge next-level impossible. Like, giving-up-carbs-at-Christmas hard or not-spilling-beer-during-ultimate-bocce-on-the-beach hard or wearing-clothes-that-aren’t-stretchy hard.

This, for the record, suits me in zero ways, what with my I-Don't-Really-Do-Difficult life mantra and all.

But, the majority of people we get to chatting with nowadays are optimistic enough about humanity that they don’t immediately assume my incompetencies extend as far as participating in casual dockside Q & A. As such, it doesn’t take more than a minute of chitchat before they hurl a loaded “Where’s home?” at me like a 1990s Randy Johnson slider.

Like most who faced The Big Unit, I usually swing and miss.

Until recently, when something fantastic happened.

I don’t know if it arrived in the form of his 102mph fastball, or a split-finger change-up, or maybe that long and lanky southpaw was still tossing me his lethal breaking slider…*

— whatever the pitch, entirely by mistake, I connected.

*One might assume that what I picked up as child from listening to my dad and sister obsess relentlessly over the Seattle Mariners (and baseball in general) -- let alone watching my sister become the most decorated high school pitcher in the state of Washington's fastpitch history -- would be enough for me to decipher pitches with pinpoint accuracy; but it isn't, so I can't... 

In late-April, Ruby Vi’s crew took turns arriving back to Park City for the first time in over two years. Our trips were fast and furious — long weekends with barely enough time for the COVID vaccines and visits with the tiny handful of friends we’d planned to squeeze in. But every single second was glorious and we gobbled up each morsel of that feast like we’d never eaten before and would never eat again.

Our souls binged on old friends and old haunts.

Then, just days after returning to Ruby Vi, some of our favorite Park City peeps came to visit us. More feasting ensued. Between tacos and tequila, boogie boards and bocce, sunshine and swimsuits, it became clear that our pandemic-induced 15-month friends-and-family-freeze was finally starting to thaw.

And the rad kept rolling.

On May 27th, the boys and I landed at LAX to begin 11 of the most extraordinary days and nights reuniting with our SoCal family.

Simultaneously, a trio of John’s best college buddies arrived in Puerto Vallarta to help him hold down the Ruby Vi fort.

I could write novel about the absolute magic of seeing my mom and sister again after 26 long months apart. And, I could spend three lifetimes talking in circles about how my heart exploded every time my nephew called me “My Moo.”

But that’s a story for another bookshelf and a monologue for a different stage.

You might be wondering how these moments, enchanting though they may be, have anything to do with me claiming victory over 90-some miles per hour of Randy Johnson heat.

Well, at some point during our hours spent traveling in and out of PVR and SLC and LAX — somewhere between visits to and from our very favorite humans and back to Ruby Vi — “Where’s home?” became a pitch I could hit.

My mom-heart melted as I watched Wyatt and Hudson disappear with some of their oldest and closest friends like they hadn’t missed a beat. My own happiness meter shot off the charts when I hugged my people, shared in their family dinners, giggled like old times over coffees. In those moments, I knew our trip to Park City was a trip home.

When dear friends joined us here at Paradise Village, as we lingered in Ruby Vi’s galley and reminisced about old times — laughing so hard, our faces hurt — I knew I was home.

Weeks later, under a Southern California sky, I tossed my favorite toddler “all the way up,” and watched his swim lessons, and played with him at the park, in the yard, at the zoo, in the “blue pool.” For a week and a half, I shared every waking moment with my mom and sister — and I was home.

As a recovering candy addict, I can assure you with self-proclaimed authority that the only thing sweeter than a taste of home is many tastes of many homes.

Now I’m not saying in the two months since our soul-binge began that I’ve earned a permanent spot in the Idle Conversation Majors, but I think I might finally be able to hold my own inside the batter’s box.

Predictably, the next time the league sends its ace to the mound to hurl a “Where’s home?” doozy at me, there’s not even a chance I’ll knock it out of the park. But, after two months of inadvertent batting practice, I think I’m ready to at least line drive my way onto first.

What I’ve come to accept of late is that over the years I’ve marched, slid, walked, dived, crawled, been carried, and now sailed my way across a lot of different home plates in a lot of different fields.

As we continue to play in new ballparks and return to the old ones, I hope I’ll spend less time trying to figure out which one I’m standing in before swinging away at that first pitch. After all, every park has a home plate and in each of them — if I’m paying attention — I bet I’ll catch glimpses of my father coaching third…

I’ve barely made it the first 90 feet when I see him across the diamond — his left arm spinning in exaggerated counterclockwise circles, his right pointing straight to the plate.

And, as I hear him holler, “Keep going!” with zealous enthusiasm, I realize it really isn’t the stadium that matters; what matters most is that I can round the bases till I steal my way home in any of them.

The post Stealing Home [#40] appeared first on BEAM REACH ADVENTURES.

It was supposed to be so simple —

change the seals on both sail drives and give an extra once-over to the port drive in case there’s something more serious going on than just a leaky seal.

It took only moments for two different boat doctors to agree: the bearings are shot and the entire drive needs to be completely replaced.

Boat Life hearts clichés. Like heart hearts them.

Like, B.O.A.T stands for Bring Out Another Thousand. 

Like, "The two best days of your life are the day you buy your boat and the day you sell it."

Like, "A sailor's plans are written in the sand at low tide." 

So, true to Boat Life cliché, in with the tide and cambio de planes. Again.

There’s really a host of items on the Overall-It’s-Not-So-Bad List, not the least of which is, despite our killer run of good luck earlier this year, we definitely remember that we’ve spent an embarrassing amount of boat time getting our asses handed to us.

Consequently, we’re pretty adept at being inept.

Plus, we’ve since landed at a spectacular marina-resort in Nuevo Vallarta, are 20 minutes from an international airport — just a two-hour flight away from family we haven’t seen in over two years, and we (and the boys!) have friends summering here as well.

So, definitely some glass-half-full-of-rosé attitude warranted with this particular wipeout.

That said, there’s also some nauseatingly disgusting strawberry Spumante being served.

Most notably, sail drives are not free. Plus, you can’t just order one from West Marine; they’re not on the shelves at Home Depot; and, in a damn near crime against boat folks, they do not exist for purchase anywhere on Amazon.

Then, of course, there’s the new reality that we’ll no longer be spending the summer sailing the Sea of Cortez, sippin’ sweet tea on Sundays with our people. Instead, we’ll be sitting — sitting by one of several pools with a cocktail in-hand no doubt, but still sitting.

So what?

Ultimately, that’s the question of the hour. Literally, so what?

For two years, we’ve set aside the basics.

(Well, to be fair, we set them aside for the first year and COVID put them off for the second, but -- sixes.) 

Granted, the pandemic leveled the playing field on this one — wandering sailors aren’t the only ones who passed on last year’s wellness checkups and airplane travel and birthday parties for their nephews. An entire planet just skated through a year without being chastised by a dental hygienist for not flossing enough.

Soon after our departure from land life, it became glaringly apparent that we’d have to temporarily shelve not just the basic life-maintenance little things like trips to doctors and dentists and hair salons, but also the basic social-life little things in our relationships with friends and family on land:

the daily chitchats

the how was work?

the wanna grab a quick coffee? 

— the tiny but significant ways we were accustomed to connecting with our tribe. We did so with eyes wide open, trusting that in three-point-five years when Ruby Vi literally came full circle, we’d get them all back.

We were on the move and on a mission so good enough had to be just that — good enough.

And, to be perfectly honest, when we’re busy — sailing, traveling, exploring, playing, diving, even planning — it isn’t all that hard. It’s pretty easy to lose track of time when countries and miles and time itself pass by like shooting stars.

Those brief but frequent glimpses of sparkly space dust are enough to convince us that all that extra non-glistening sky can pretty much be ignored.

But these days, when we tell stories of our own shooting stars, we can’t even recall which sky we were under when they streaked past.

Remember when we landed that insane swordfish off the coast of Guatemala? Wait -- were we still in Costa Rica then? Or were we already in Mexico? Ugh -- hold on, I'll check my notes...

Remember those 12-foot following seas on our passage to Panama? Wait -- no -- that was on our way to Jamaica, I think. Wasn't it? Ugh -- let me check my notes...

We text these updates with our people, of course — perhaps through even the occasional-though-ever-dwindling-in-frequency FaceTime date — but we know we’re barely scratching the surface of being truly connected to each other’s lives in the way we once were. We’ve recounted our comet sightings (or at least some of them) but it’s been a long time since we’ve shared idle chitchat beneath a nondescript layer of cloud cover.

Until recently, I’d been resigned to willingly making that offering in service of the dream. Goal-getting requires a level of sacrifice, of course.

But the infant nephew I mushed close to me in a teary goodbye in early 2019 now wears dinosaur undies and speaks in complete sentences.

And each time he calls me “Moo,” my heart-seal leaks a little more than the time before.

When we talk, he regularly demands to visit the boat so he can “drive the big wheel” at Ruby Vi’s helm. Even though he’s only seen it through blurry video chats, he recognizes this shiny chrome spoke (that’s bigger than he is) as a beacon of toddler toy wizardry. And it calls to him. Loudly.

From afar, I’ve learned he loves airplanes and dump trucks and usually prefers blues and greens to those other less-desirable colors of the rainbow. I know he’ll dip a strawberry in mayonnaise if you let him (which I’m fairly confident my sister does) and that he can recite and recognize every letter of the alphabet in proper order.

I’ve definitely seen a handful of his shooting stars — but a handful no longer seems like enough.

I don’t know what it feels like when he plops down on my lap so I can read him a story. I don’t know what face he makes when he tastes a new food he thinks is gross (or isn’t adequately covered in mayo) or what toy he picks up first after he wakes from a nap. I don’t know what it sounds like when he sighs or what it’s like to run my fingers through his head of bouncy curls.

In the most generous scenario, Ruby Vi’s crew has managed to trade enough big-star-stories with our family and friends to survive our extended absence from each other. But we know we’ve lost years of the little ones:

the funniest thing that happened today at work...

the weirdest thing my kid said...

the chats about nothing over coffee on the deck or everything-and-then-some over wine on the big gray sofa... 

Since leaving the States, we’ve been resetting the Check Engine warning light on our lives’ dashboards without actually checking the engine.

We picked magic over maintenance, distracting ourselves with the ceremony of the stars, while the rest of the less-flashy night sky waited patiently to be noticed.

Because they're phenomenal human beings, our friends and family have graciously tolerated our compulsory blindness and lack of attention to the principles of basic human and relationship preservation. 

But now that we’ve practically stopped dead in our tracks, we’re recognizing the opportunity desperate need for a thorough checkup — one where we actually look past the glossy gelcoat and dig around under the hood; one where we drain off what’s left of our murky two-year-old oil and refill it anew in hopes that we might keep our moving parts moving — even while we stand still for a while. Less deference paid to the stars and more to the microscopic matter that surrounds them.

With any luck, we’ll even be able to adjust the gears that once afforded us the pace to search the sky for more than just space rocks on fire.

While this certainly isn’t the first time we’ve been “stuck” at a marina, it is the first time being stuck feels more like a gift than a punishment.

When Ruby’s boat doctors moved her onto the transplant list, they simultaneously allowed us to carve out some time to take and analyze a few life-scans of our own. With any luck, we won’t need major organs replaced — though I imagine some crazy-long hugs and in-person chats with friends and family are gonna seem just as life-saving.

(Probably a trip to the dentist wouldn't be the worst call either.)

So, for the next six months, we’ll stop staring at shooting stars and instead try to rediscover the too-long-neglected space that allowed those stars to exist in the first place.

While Ruby Vi slows to a literal halt and takes time to heal, we’ll obviously be slowing down, too, and working on some personal restorations of our own. There will be pluses to our change of pace:

we'll provision for two days at a time instead of two months and buy real half & half for our coffee; 

we'll eat (a lot of) one-dollar tacos, walk on sidewalks, and wear real clothes -- sort of; 

we'll remember what it's like to have WiFi and cell service and unlimited water and power. 

Best of all, we’ll visit family and friends; they’ll visit us, too. When they do, I hope they remember to bring their skies with them — stars, dust, clouds, and all.

We’ll talk for hours and hours over coffee and cocktails, about nothing and everything — relishing the time and space to do so.

For the next several months, we won’t be able to show our visiting crew Sailboat Magic in its intended form. We can’t sail them to deserted anchorages or give them the chance to trim the jib sheet as Ruby waddles her way across the SoC; they won’t be able to dive off of her sugar scoops to swim beside a curious whale shark. They won’t see meteors dance across our night sky.

But we will introduce them to the glories of having “resort privileges” and they will know intimately the kind of mixed-drink mojo that happens when I have enough power to use my seventeen-dollar plastic Jamaican blender.

Perhaps though, our greatest offering to all who visit, will be the miracle that is access to toilets where you’re allowed to actually put the toilet paper in the toilet. And flush it.

In the fall, once Ruby Vi and her crew have completed their treatment and recovery plans (and hurricane season abates), we intend to sail the Sea of Cortez — but we’ve let go of our rush to get there. Like us at present, the Sea’s not going anywhere. When we finally do arrive, I’m confident our eyes will involuntarily refocus on fireballs once more.

In the meantime, I’m gonna work up to feelings of gratitude for the hazy beauty of Puerto Vallarta’s light-polluted midnight sky, accepting with relative grace complacency that I probably won’t be catching a falling star here, even if I try. Instead, I’ll savor the opportunity to rediscover the view under our friends’ and family’s skies. Also, I’m gonna relearn learn how to do an oil change.

(Just kidding. I absolutely am not gonna do that.)

I might, however, recommit to flossing between all my teeth and not just the ones with visible food in them.

(You are welcome in advance for that, Dental Hygienist in My Mexican Future.)

When I’m not too busy flossing like a boss — or flushing toilet paper down one of the resort’s 97 available-to-me toilets, I’ll be camped out at Ruby Vi’s helm, bottle of Collinite and a cleaning rag in-hand, polishing that big wheel so it’s bright and shiny for the day my sweet nephew shows up to “drive.”

After all, just because we can’t see the shooting stars in our own sky these days, doesn’t mean we won’t catch a glimpse of one in someone else’s. We just have to make time to look.

The post Someone Else’s Sky [#39] appeared first on BEAM REACH ADVENTURES.

It's late-January. Everything is awesome. Then, we blink and it's late-February and everything is even more awesome. So awesome, in fact, that we wonder when we'll have to pay our dues for so much all-at-once-awesomeness. 

Before we can change our minds about tempting fate by even asking that question, it's answered:  

"Pay now, please."

So, here’s the thing. You can definitely keep reading. I’ll walk you through the glorious (and inglorious) details. There will be photos.

But there’s no shame in walking away. Now is not the time to be frivolous with your spare minutes. Certainly no sense in diggin’ a hole just to fill another.

That said, I suppose if you’re committed to your rusty wooden-handled garden tool, who am I to get in your way?

First, in order to prepare you for the ridiculous similes to come (which, pro-tip, will be best enjoyed tolerated with a sunny southern drawl), I should offer up a bit of background information:

As many of you might remember, we spent most of our seven-month-long stretch in Caribbean Panama, buddy boating with our now-dear friends, Desiree and Jordan. At some point during our time together, John and Jordan developed absurdly committed Southern Gentleman personas that they slipped into and out of character with Oscar-worthy ease. 

They'd quip remarks like:

“The thing about a cutter rig is it’s more slippery than a greased pig at a fourth of Joo-ly celebration”

Jordan Wicht

and:

“Just as Whiskey Earl used to say, ‘If you have a shot with breakfast, you’d best plan on havin’ anotha with lunch.'”  

John Pennell

Desiree and I rolled our eyes at them more than a NASCAR tire racin' at Daytona, but it would be a lie to say our cheeks didn't hurt from all the laughing. 

What the holy hell does this have to do with our last two months? Almost nothing.

Except this — while missing all the laughter and good times our buddy boating run provided, and cursing the fact that I haven’t seen my dearest friends in over a year, or my family in nearly two, reminiscing about how fantastic our scattered-about tribe of people is seems to be my favorite coping mechanism.

Even though tacos and margaritas are (blessedly) the pillars of our present world, as I sit down to write this post, I admit that sometimes the chitter-chatter of those two southern bafoons rings so loudly in my ears that I have to fight off the urge to wash down a pile o’ corn fritters — fried up real nice on the skillet — with an icy mint julep.

So that’s the southern-simile-disclaimer. Proceed with due caution.

If you’re hardy folk and are still ready to dig that hole, onward we’ll plow.

On January 25th, after eight months in Panama, we finally waved goodbye to our transcontinental host. We spent the next five weeks slowly sailing (read: mostly motoring) our way up the Costa Rican coastline past surf breaks and surf towns, friendly locals, delicious food, and spectacular landscapes.

Shortly after arriving, a friend from Way Back When met up with us in Golfito and sailed aboard Ruby Vi for nine days up to Quepos.

We walked stretches of sandy beaches that seemed to stretch to eternity and tricked giant coconuts into deserting the palm trees that hoarded them.

Enter the Awesome.

There was hiking and cocktailing and swimming and fishing and general shenaniganing. We had more fun than a gang o' geriatric 'gators loungin' in the bog before supper.

Mikey was the first person from “home” we’d seen in over a year and it was a surreal experience.

After we said goodbye, the Awesome just kept on keeping' on, like the honey dripping' off yer cornbread at a backyard barbecue. 

We marveled as a pod of whales gathered for a boisterous breakfast in the current ahead of us and almost lost our minds when one of them breeched 150 yards off our stern after we passed by. We watched marlin long jump across purple sunsets and giant rays channel their inner Rodney Dangerfield to triple lindy 12 feet out of the water. For 900 miles, dolphins flipped and splashed and played and raced through calm and crazy seas alike.

We laughed as sea turtles and leatherbacks drifted past, sometimes carrying wayward shorebirds on their backs — always looking a little dumbfounded by our arrival in their lane of slow traffic when they finally popped their heads above water to take a peek around.

If all this is sounding a little over the top, like goin’ to church twice on the same day, you may want to bow out now before I get to the finale.

As our time in Costa Rica drew to a close, we managed (miraculously) to anchor just off the beach where friends from Park City were in their final three nights of a two-month house swap. They emptied their pantry for us, bringing books and booze and treats galore. We stole just a few hours together aboard Ruby Vi for a sunset happy hour before boat life took us away,

but spending time with some of the “old crew” felt the way sipping sweet tea on a southern porch swing looks — finer ‘n frogs’ hair.

Then, after leaving our friends, we coasted into the super-posh Marina Papagayo where we inherited a fellow boater’s free week-long stay.

Did you catch that? A free week. Like a cool breeze on a hot August night down in the bayou, it was literally free. 

We hiked to find the best views on the peninsula, enjoyed the company of our billionaire yacht-neighbors, and met new friends — one of whom happened to score us an invite to a hosted dinner at Planet Hollywood as guests of the general manager.

Wait. What?! 

Like a heart attack before you finish your bucket o' fried chicken, I'm totally serious. 

And now, perhaps you realize why our how-did-we-get-so-lucky month prompted us to wonder when (and in what form) we’d be called upon to actually pay for all of this frosting.

From Costa Rica, we sailed nearly 500 miles direct to Marina Chiapas, the first available port of entry in southern Mexico, just a quick hop north of the Guatemalan border.

Along the way, the ever-presence of Sailboat Magic blinded us to the warning signs that perhaps our glory buffet was running out of the good stuff.

It's easy to overlook that the salad bar's been reduced to a tray of soggy iceberg lettuce and a vat of baby corn when you've got a seven-foot sailfish on the line or 300 dolphins playing off the bow.

When the animals weren’t hogging the spotlight, the sun and moon and stars were more than willing to take the stage. Then, there were naps and backgammon games and finally enough homemade salsa to last the entire trip. There was big wind and no wind and choppy seas and seas flatter ‘n Florida.

So, to be fair, as our all-you-can-eat smorgasbord slowly dwindled down to nothing but that weird 3-bean concoction no one eats and a flickering heat lamp hovering awkwardly over the lonely cutting board where the prime rib used to live, we were busy looking somewhere else.

But, as subtle as a squeaky fart in Uncle Cletus’ Chevy pickup on the way to Mama’s house for supper, the signs were definitely there.

On Day 2, we heard a weird noise coming from our port side engine locker and decided to kill the engine. Long story short — there’s water in the sail drive and maybe the dog clutch needs replacing. This, in a nutshell, is bad and requires us to haul this beast of boat onto dry land to fix it. However, because Ruby is such a hip-y thing, we can’t just haul her out anywhere — she has to go to a Big & Tall boat yard that can handle her 29-foot beam. (The closest option is near Puerto Vallarta — roughly 900 miles from Chiapas.)

Also, the starboard engine is leaking oil like a tarpaper shack leaks rains after a hailstorm. So there’s that. Oh — and I almost forgot — on our second day in Chiapas, John’s phone just up and died like a June bug come fall. Muerto. Caput. The end.

I know, I know — cry me a river, right?

Lord knows, our current plight is certainly more typical of Boat Life than our recent miracle mile of Everything-is-Awesome. Perhaps, like the bite of a cottonmouth when yer skinny dippin' at dawn, that's why it stings a bit more.

But, if Ruby Vi has taught us anything, it’s that being flexible is a non-negotiable attribute of Boat Folks (at least of happy Boat Folks). And, what good is sailing around the world if we can’t do it with a smile? So — flexible (albeit feigned) we’ll be.

In light of the current tantrums our engine and sail drive are throwing at our feet, our plans for short slow hops up the coastline to La Paz has now morphed into longer jumps at a faster-than-we’d-prefer pace. We’re missing places we’d hoped to see and spring break visitors we’d hoped to host as we intentionally loitered along the way.

But we’re trying to remember we’re playing the long game here. This isn’t a horseshoes match down by the river that’ll wrap before the butter churns.

So, on March 13th, we hobbled with one engine out of Chiapas for a 600-mile passage to Zihuatanejo.

Seven sunrises, 10 chess matches, one 35-game backgammon tournament, and two beautiful tuna later, we were greeted by the miracle of $1 tacos, white sandy beaches, cliff-side resorts, and finally enough guacamole to keep up with my avocado obsession.

Needless to say, we’re having a tough time peeling ourselves away.

Still, we’re gathering the fortitude to say farewell to this patch of paradise and move on to the next one. Granted, we’ll be movin’ slower than a Tennessee Walking Horse meanderin’ through an orchard o’ apple trees, but we will, in fact be moving.

Because at the end of the day, we know the sooner we can get to Puerto Vallarta, the sooner Ruby Vi can get her bits fixed. The sooner Ruby’s bits are fixed, the sooner she can sail us off into the sunset. The sooner we can sail off into the sunset, the sooner our people can sail off with us.

And the sooner we can sail with our people, the sooner we can get back to that slowly-sippin’-sweet-tea-on-a-southern-Sunday sort of feeling.

The post Sweet Tea on Sunday [#38] appeared first on BEAM REACH ADVENTURES.

If we were runners — which, for the record, unequivocally we are not — but if we were — we’d be sprinters.

(I mean, not real sprinters who train and go fast. Obviously.) 

Remember elementary school recess races? Back when all we had to do was hurl ourselves 30 yards across two four-square courts, just past the bent tetherball pole? Back when form didn’t count? Ya — we’d be those sprinters.

We’re terrible at delayed gratification and we downright suck at saving the good stuff for later.

The moment something makes it onto our would-be bucket list is the moment we attempt to make it happen. Immediately. No warm-ups. No stretching. (Zero commitment to form.) Just an expanse of cracked blacktop, some obstacles we didn’t notice in the way, and us — flailing our way across, around, and over it all.

Before the start whistle blows, we jump. Every damn time.

Admittedly, it’s not the kind of calculated or cautious approach to life that always results in safe passage to the finish line (or, for that matter, arrival at the finish line at all).

We’ve taken our fair share of diggers at the 10-yard line, pulled more than our quota of hammies before even making it past the hopscotchers.

But, with the stubborn and Gumby-like resilience ignorance of toddlers, after every crash and burn, we whine about it, wipe away the blood, pause for a snack, and then promptly do it the same way all over again. Rinse and repeat.

There’s a version of a botched quote, generally misattributed to Einstein, that goes something like this:

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if maybe there shouldn’t be a little more space at the table reserved for this particular kind of crazy. Not just because I want to believe there’s a place for us (mostly me), but because sometimes, doing the same thing in the same way for the seventy-thousandth time lands you somewhere new.

And, as it turns out, once in a great while, that somewhere new is not face-down on the playground, but transiting the Panama Canal with your family aboard your own sailboat.

There have been moments in life that transcended my reality — moments that seemed far bigger than reasonable for me to physically or emotionally handle. Moments that stopped time.

Some were devastating. Some obscure. But others have been downright glorious.

For me, escorting Ruby Vi with my family from the Caribbean Sea across a continent and into the Pacific Ocean was one of them.

On December 18th, after sad goodbyes to our buddy boat and our friends at Shelter Bay and a frenetic series of last-minute boat fixes, we untied Ruby Vi from slip C13 and set out in search of the Pacific Ocean.

At the risk of boring you with too many details, I’ll start by saying this — taking our boat through the Panama Canal was every bit as jaw-dropping as I thought it would be.

Next, I'm gonna go ahead and give an abridged account of our transit, but if even the thought of that bores you to tears, you should definitely start scrolling down the page until you get to the video of the final lock gates opening and pick up again there. 

Ain't no one got time to be bored by a blog post...

With three friends aboard (as required extra Canal crew) and rafted beside our transit buddy boat, Wilderness, we tucked inside each of three lock chambers behind (on day 1) and in front of (on day 2) massive cargo ships that made our 50- and 55-foot catamarans look like my nephew’s bath toys.

As soon as we entered each chamber, under the direction of our onboard Canal advisor, hundred-foot dock lines led from Ruby Vi’s and Wilderness’ bow and stern cleats were secured by Canal workers to massive bollards at the top edge of the Canal wall. Within 60 seconds of being set, the lock doors closed and the process of raising a cargo ship and two toy boats above the sea began.

Three locks and 85 feet later, we found ourselves in Lake Gatún, where we were required to spend the night tied up to a massive mooring ball.

The next morning, new advisors boarded Ruby Vi and Wilderness, and together we motored 20-some miles across the lake to the final set of locks and the gateway to the Pacific.

A version of the same process then repeats itself three more times: raft to Wilderness, enter the chamber, send dock lines to Canal walls, giant cargo ship enters behind us, doors close, water rushes out, doors open.

Only this time, when the final set of lock doors opened, it meant we had crossed a continent. In a sailboat. Our sailboat.

And it. was. awesome.

In relative hind site, I now realize I may have missed the mark on "not boring you with details." Sorry about that. 

One bit of good news is that I'll never know if you just up and walk away from the rest of this post. Or skip ahead. Or commit that from now on you'll only ever just look at the photos. Words are for suckers.

The ball's in your court.

Our return “home” to the Pacific Ocean, has not disappointed.

After a quick two nights anchored in Panama City to refuel and regroup, we began our Panama exit strategy. First up was a stretch of 10 beautiful days exploring the white sandy beaches and picturesque sandbars of the Las Perlas islands. We spent our days in the water, beachcombing, and exploring low-tide-only islets.

On New Year’s Eve, Ruby Vi was underway: motor-sailing 150 nautical miles west overnight, around the sometimes-ruthless Punta Mala (though she was on her best behavior for us), to the deserted brown beaches and rocky shores of Ensenada Naranjo.

Along the way, we watched a blood moon the size of a planet rise out of the sea, staining the night sky a dusky purple glow and unrolling a magic carpet of rust-colored glitter that glimmered its way from horizon to horizon.

If I had a better camera, I'd show you.

We marveled as Sirius twinkled blue, green, white, and red with the fairytale luminosity of a hung-from-the-heavens disco ball — a celestial New Year’s Eve party.

But gifts from the sky aren’t the only ones we received from the Pacific.

She sent us dolphin races. (We lost.)

She also delivered 14 fish in 10 hours fishing — many of which lived to bite another lure while we ate our way back to available fridge space.

After two nights in Naranjo (and fish for every meal), following a tip from a friend and our cruising guide, our search for fuel led us up a river to a bizarre little anchorage in Puerto Mutis. Timing the tides to benefit from a favorable flood current, we arrived before dinner at this eerily quiet little fishing town on the final day of a nationwide lockdown to anchor and wait for diesel dawn.

But a breezeless night on a mangrove river meant a whole lotta sticky sweat, even more bugs, and absolutely zero sleep.

Mercifully, when we heard the now-familiar cacophony of howler monkeys just after dawn, we knew we’d almost survived.

After three dinghy trips to deliver twenty-three jerry cans of diesel and gas from the itty bitty fuel “dock” back to Rubes, we rode the final few hours of the morning’s ebb tide back down the river and along the coastline to the super-chill, surfer-vibey town of Santa Catalina:

A brief rendezvous with our Canal buddy, Wilderness, before they set off to new horizons. 

A walk through town and drinks by a pool. 

Good WiFi. 

Cheap and delicious veggies.

More perfect beaches. 

Even a newfound passion for Bear -- tiny speed-crab hunting -- which, despite an obvious lack of talent for, she has dedicated every shred of her current existence to pursuing. Relentlessly.

And now, as I type, John is finalizing paperwork for our departure from Panama and our arrival in Costa Rica, a mere two weeks away.

Even though we still have a few remaining patches of Panamanian Paradise we hope to explore before the bells rings on this particular sprint series, the finish line is near.

From easy friendships to baby sloths, a chocolate farm to an enchanted island, a jungle river to a big city, and two oceans in two days through one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, Panama has been one hell of a playground.

And yet, more than a handful of times during the eight months we’ve spent here, I have exasperatedly referred to this country as insane — insane rules, insane political appointees, insane lockdowns…

But Panama has reminded us just how much we enjoy indulging in a slice of crazy cake once in a while.

After all, nothing fuels wind sprints like dessert.

Undoubtedly, there are more clumsy face-plants in our future, it’s a blacktop tax we willingly begrudgingly pay.

But if our next round of recess races proves anything like our last, as long as we have enough bandaids and snacks, those wipeouts are gonna be totally worth it.

The post Where the Wipeouts are Worth It [#37] appeared first on BEAM REACH ADVENTURES.

It’s rarely crowded along the bushwhacked track and that feeling of accomplishment when arriving at a faraway place after a self-made journey feels a whole lot like this:

John and I admit to being a little bit addicted to this approach to life.

Choosing the “ordinary” option — especially as it relates to travel — always stings just enough that we ardently try to avoid it where and whenever possible.

East from The Bahamas is the popular route? We'll go west.

COVID might shut down the world? We'll push on to Panama.

Others are delaying a year before crossing the Pacific? We're still going "on time."

For a hot 20-month minute, we were on a fine little roll —

unfazed by the paths of others, undeterred by popular COVID detours. I mean, once you’ve managed to make it into the maze made of milkshakes, surely your reward is a straight and fat straw to guide you to the end, right?

Ya -- not so much. That one's definitely gonna be a hard No from The Universe.

Slow down, Tiger — Ain’t no straws here. Even the sweetest, slurpiest path is served with a pile of forks and a good-luck-with-that pat on the back.

So noted.

But it really was all so good.

And, it was set to remain that way: a buddy boat to cross an ocean and explore the South Pacific with; a season ahead of the masses of let’s-delay-a-year boats; and an in-tact circumnavigation “schedule.”

Oh, the beauty of a well-made plan (and self-righteous path picking).

It was totally staying beautiful, too — right up until Crossing the Pacific During a Pandemic finally foiled us… Dammit.

Almost embarrassingly, our grand sailing scheme has, until now, been largely unaffected by COVID.

Sure, we’ve seen lockdowns and restrictions; we’ve had to bypass islands and cruising grounds we’d hoped to explore; we’ve certainly endured the painful absence of visits to and from family and friends. That said, our timetable and general itinerary has managed to stay overwhelmingly whole.

But as our young friend, David from Bluefields, taught us to embrace — and laugh about nearly every day since:

cambio de planes.

As much as we try to espouse a come-what-may attitude, this particular change of plans feels a bit like stepping on a Lego — at first both excruciating and swear-word-inducing, yet ultimately quite survivable.

The great agony is not so much the literal pain of the impaled-in-foot-flesh Lego (or the shock of our cambio de planes), but more the disappointment of knowing it could’ve been avoided.

If only I'd watched where I was going, I'd have seen the tiny plastic terror lying in wait and undoubtedly just walked around it. 

If only we'd had the foresight to seriously ponder this potential fork in the road, actually arriving at it might've seemed less debilitating. 

Excruciating…yet survivable.

Enter the musings of the great Maya Angelou:

Oh, Maya. So smart about all the things.

I think of myself as someone who doesn't step on Legos because I think of myself as someone who watches where I step. 

I think of myself as someone who doesn't doesn't let a few COVID border closures shake her from her course or her calendar.

I think of myself as someone who creates her own destiny, writes her own story, takes the road less traveled. 

I think of myself as an adventurer, an explorer, a maker of memories.

I’ve never pictured Maya Angelou as an eye-roller, but I’m quite certain she’s rolling her eyes at me right about now.

And, while I’m confident she has a more eloquent way of saying it, I think the gist of what she’s whisper-shouting my direction is:

“Good grief, Molly — get over yourself.”

I'm trying, Ms. Angelou. I'm really trying. 

So, now I’m remembering there’s a reason popular gets to become popular — lots of people like it.

In the spirit of overcoming how I think about myself (and worshiping the wisdom of Maya Angelou), I’m committed to being okay (at least for a spell) with embracing something even though it’s popular. After all, it’s not like we’ve plotted an unpopular course to sail around the world. (Our path from Panama is literally the most popular way to attempt a westward circumnavigation.)

And, at the end of the day, the goal of circumnavigating, in and of itself, isn’t all that unique an endeavor.

Apparently, I don't shy away from popular as often as I think I do.

So what exactly does the popular option look like for COVID-stalled would-be world cruisers currently in Panama?

It looks like heading to the Sea of Cortez with everyone else. 

For us, it also looks like finding a creative solution to keeping our Ruby Vi/Atticus Dream Team alive. And, it looks (potentially) like adding an extra year to our circumnavigation calendar.

Everything could change tomorrow. And everything could change again after that. Boat Life is a big fan of keeping us dancing awkwardly off beat…

Recently, amidst all the recent chaos of decisions and cambio de planes and brainstorming and re-calendaring, our friend, Jordan, casually noted that sailing around the world is really only as cool as we think it is.

He must've been chatting with Ms. Angelou. 

But he’s right, and his words served as a solid enough reminder for us to revisit the goals we committed to at the start of all this:

Explore. Experience. Educate.

Get There Faster was never on our list.

Currently, most of the South Pacific is still off limits to us. We could make the crossing anyway and prepare to race through the 9,000 miles that separate Panama from Southeast Asia. But why? And to where?

If there’s even a chance to do this right, we decided we should try.

As of today, we’ll still be heading through the Panama Canal before the end of the year. But then, instead of a January push to the Galapagos and a March crossing to the Marquesas, we expect to be bashing our way up the west coast of Central America to Mexico and into the Sea of Cortez.

In a dream-detour scenario, we’ll spend the year ahead swimming with whale sharks and slaying our Spanish lessons;

we’ll eat our body weight in fish tacos and drink margaritas like it’s our spiritual calling.

Best of all, we’ll finally see our people — our friends and family kept a world away by lousy COVID.

It’s safe to assume I’ll always be someone who wonders what kind of milkshakes I missed out on along those paths I rushed past — along the routes I didn’t have time to travel.

(Retrospective Milkshake FOMO is a persistent beast.) 

But, if Sailboat Magic has any say in the matter, maybe this 12-month 2,200-mile detour will give us a sweet taste of what it’s like to try more milkshakes — to travel more roads instead of having to choose just one.

Maybe, if we can just get over ourselves, we’ll remember how much fun it is to travel with the team, how much value there is in knowing how (and when) to swim with the school.

Maybe, when we’re sipping añejos with our favorite humans while flying manta rays dance across the water under a pink La Paz sunset, we’ll forget FOMO was an affliction we once suffered from; we’ll wonder why we ever thought straws were a good idea — why “get there faster” was a pace worth even considering.

Maybe sometimes, arriving at a fork in the road is less about deciding which path to choose and more about deciding which path to choose first.

Maybe this fork in our road is simply an opportunity to enjoy a longer walk (and a few more milkshakes).

The post The Long Way Around [#36] appeared first on BEAM REACH ADVENTURES.

Everything we hoped this journey would be is finally getting a chance to actually be.

Predictably, stopping to write about it has, until now, been the last thing I’ve been motivated to do. (Likely a glaring indication that my current role as a volunteer/amateur/sort-of blogger might be slightly entirely outside my skillset.)

If we've learned one thing together, it's that we must never under-estimate the willingness of Lazy to raise the lazy bar. 

Eight weeks between posts is not a record I'm proud of, but it is what it is so I'm owning ignoring it and moving on. 

Here are pictures of Wyatt and Hudson with a baby sloth and a sewing machine to help distract you from my inadequacies.

Did it work?

We all know sailors’ plans don’t always shake out. Between boat problems and weather problems alone, it’s a Christmas Miracle anyone ever leaves sight of the shore.

But boat folks are a special breed of optimists — happily resigned to an ever-damp existence of do-overs and try-again-tomorrows.

We accept Salt Life and Perpetual Disappointment as the committed bedfellows they are, because we know that once in a blue moon the spawn of that odd couple is straight up Sailboat Magic. That possibility alone is enough to keep most of us in the game.

When we need more than a promise, we keep our spirits lifted with tales of others’ small victories:

• She found the spare part
• He got the WiFi to work
• They made it back before they completely ran out of drinking water
• That boat still had one working engine so it wasn’t that bad

We’re super-fans of the phrase, “It could’ve been worse.”

It’s a tried and true coping mechanism that pretty much all sailors we know use liberally when describing their own tales of misery. A few recent accounts from fellow sailors:

We lost our wind crossing the Indian Ocean and literally went backwards for five days. But then, we caught a great breeze on day six and ended up making it across. So, you know, it definitely could've been worse.

We got struck by lightening about 200 miles out but luckily our engine still worked. Plus, we had a hand-held compass so we were totally fine. It could've been way worse.

We battled back-to-back attempts at piracy off the Gorda Bank but between our evasive maneuvers and the rough sea state, the pirates gave up. I mean, some boats have actually been boarded, so things could've been much worse.

Uh huh. Uh huh. Totally.

Maintaining perspective is key to sustaining a (reasonably) happy Boat Life.

Well, perspective and a beverage.

Actually, mostly beverages.

(Party hats are optional, but they certainly don't hurt.)

And then, there’s the necessary (and often fruitless) evil that is Planning. At the end of the day, even though we all know in our salty souls that making plans will likely be an exercise in futility, we drink our drinks and we plan and we plan and we refill our drinks and we plan some more.

Because someday the weather will cooperate. 

Someday our boat will be "good enough to get there."

And someday, both of those events will occur simultaneously.

When they do, we’ll be damned if we miss the chance to weigh anchor and ride the breeze along the rhumb line toward The Dream.

A few months ago, we gathered in Ruby Vi’s salon with our soon-to-be buddy boat, Atticus, and mapped out our Great Escape.

For this particular round of planning, our final destination was Shelter Bay Marina in Colón, where we’d tackle final projects in preparation for our joint Canal transit and Pacific crossing. Knowing we had places to see along the way, a direct Bocas-to-Colón route wouldn’t cut it.

Plan. Plan. Beverage. Plan. Repeat.

Our goals were lofty, to say the least. We reserved the better part of October to be off the grid — sailing together to four separate anchorages on our collective Caribbean-side-of-Panama bucket list. Atticus even extended a wishful-thinking invitation to our Bocas tribe to join us midway through the month at an island anchorage we’d all been drooling over.

It really shouldn't have all come together. 

Getting one boat out of an anchorage is a feat on its own. But two? At the same time? And then six more for a midway-meetup?

That’s more than a sandwich short of a picnic.

But soggy sandwiches sitting in the sun are silly.

Our crowd will happily call half a bag of stale pretzels and four coconuts a party, so a sandwich-less picnic is absolutely an event we can get behind — with marked enthusiasm.

By early-October, Ruby Vi had gone from wussy to wizard — from dirty dock ornament to the exploration-mobile she was born to be.

Step off, sandwiches — our alt-food picnic is on.

We spent the month largely off the grid, slowly working our way from Bocas to Colón — hitting as many of the coastline’s must-see spots as we could along the way.

Five nights anchored in Bluefields, brought us to the southeastern edge of the Bocas Archipelago — an area populated exclusively by families of the indigenous Ngöbe comarca.

Not what one might call a cruising hotspot, our arrival was met instantly with intense and sustained interest from locals ashore.

Throughout each day and into most evenings, kids and a few adults would paddle their cayucos just astern of or alongside Ruby Vi and Atticus.

Some would announce their arrival with the soon comically-predictable greeting: “Tienes ropas?” Others, would linger quietly, sometimes only a foot or two away, staring at us — perhaps wondering what kind of weirdos live on boats and only wear swimsuits.

We learned quickly that “tienes ropas?” was a request for clothing.

The epiphany that followed? Adidas-anything would buy us whatever jungle fruits our hearts desired.

As such, we traded Hudson’s entire wardrobe of outgrown Adidas-wear with local kids and teenagers.

• How ’bout two pairs of shorts for a bunch of plantanos (bananas, sort-of)
• Perhaps a warm-up jacket for a pipa (coconut)
• Maybe swim trunks and a rash guard for two taronjas (grapefruit)

You got sugarcane? We got T-shirts.

(One boy even showed Hudson how to efficiently machete away the cane bark to get to the good stuff quickly -- invariably Hudson's most popular new skill.)

Early on, we forged a special connection with a young boy named David whose family owned the closest property to our anchorage. He guided us through a hiking tour of his family’s jungle property and took us under his wing throughout our stay.

(Our über-talented friends, Desiree and Jordan of Sailing Project Atticus, created a pretty incredible YouTube episode about our shared time in Bluefields and, in particular, the significance of their own relationship with David. 

To check it out and see Bluefields in live action, CLICK HERE!) 

Our next notable highlight after Bluefields was the enchanting island of Escudo de Veraguas — roughly thirty miles to the southeast.

Our excitement about arriving at this patch of paradise was punctuated no doubt by the four-foot, 60-pound king mackerel John managed to reel in while underway.

Sparsely populated by only a handful of Ngöbe families, the island hosts pymgy sloths, pristine reefs, abundant spearfishing, Disney-esque islets and inlets, and the kind of turquoise water, tall swoopy palms, and soft sandy beaches that look more like a movie set than a place you can just sidle up to on your sailboat.

As further proof of concept for the viability of the no-sandwich picnic, a host of boats from our Bocas tribe actually made it to the meetup.

We snorkeled and spearfished and explored and bonfired. And, channeling our inner Bubba Gump, for all the days we ate king mackerel in all the ways:

barbecued mackerel, steamed mackerel, curried mackerel, mackerel with eggs, mackerel with rice, mackerel steaks, garlic mackerel, leftover mackerel... 

Then, when the weather turned gnarly, the gang rode out three days and nights of squally weather in our suddenly wild and roll-y anchorage.

Only one boat dragged anchor, but it caught again pretty quickly. So, you know, it definitely could've been worse.

Solidarity. Perspective. Beverages.

On the evening of day five in Veraguas, we waved a teary farewell to our anchorage of Bocas friends — knowing it was just a matter of time and luck and Sailboat Magic before our paths would cross again.

Our overnight sail brought us another 93 miles southeast to the mouth of the Rio Chagres.

Though our passage from Veraguas was entirely uneventful, there was still something surreal about sailing directly from the Caribbean Sea into the flat-calm fresh waters of this impressive river.

Like a boss, the Rio Chagres owned the Panamanian Jungle Checklist we didn’t know we had:

1. Anchor in a jungle river — check
2. Float a jungle river in the Relaxation Station — check
3. Explore a 500-year-old fort — check
4. See an anteater while hiking through a jungle — check
5. Do not get eaten by a crocodile while bathing in a jungle river — check

After three perfectly placid river nights, we rode the high from our near-month of boat wins right through the Panama Canal breakwater and into our slip at the marina.

So now here we are, at the end of our second week in Colón. We’re soaking up some nearly-forgotten luxuries like warm, fresh water showers in air-conditioned bathrooms and group workouts under a palapa in the morning breeze. Bear hunts monkeys and trash pandas on our daily walks through the jungle and periodically we ride the marina’s free shuttle to and from town…

It’s downright civilized.

Also, there are teenagers here -- glorious teenagers -- who have renewed Wyatt and Hudson's joie de vivre and given them a reason to actually finish their schoolwork in a timely manner so as not to miss out on afternoon shenanigans. 

And then, because sometimes Sailboat Magic is the gift that keeps on giving — or perhaps because October literally boasted a blue moon — on Halloween, we crewed as line-handlers for a friend’s overnight Canal transit on his 40-foot power-yacht.

So — that was awesome.

If, by any chance, you’ve managed to make it through all of these words, best case scenario is that I’ve adequately explained away my two-month blog hiatus (or at least bored you to the point of continuing to not care at all how often these posts go live).

As they say with a shrug in Utah, "It's sixes." 

But I’m not lying when I say I hope you’ll serve pretzels and coconuts at your next party.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that I’m just a little bit curious to know if you’re now wondering, as I am, why we don’t all go to more picnics.

In my part-time/subpar/kinda-blogger dreams, I can already see us sprinting toward the next picnic purveyor who rolls through with open-invitations. We’re shouting, “Oh hell yes!” while tripping spastically over mismatched flip-flops and scrambling to find our sunglasses.

Mercifully, we’re too full from all the pretzels to give a rat’s ass about the imminent lack of sandwiches.

The post Speaking of Sandwiches [#35] appeared first on BEAM REACH ADVENTURES.