Shh… We’re Sleeping [#28]

For cruisers, the Caribbean has only two seasons: the one without hurricanes (roughly November — May/June) and the one with hurricanes (roughly June/July — October).

Some of our cruiser-friends and new acquaintances had always planned to return to their land-based homes at the end of spring sailing; some were undecided about what they’d do or where they’d go come June 1st;

still others, like us, planned to be out sailing and exploring the world for the long haul — or at least a handful of years — before even considering waking from their own Boat Dream.

But this pandemic has given many in our situation enough pause, in one way or another, to decide to wake up early; to turn around; to sail back to the U.S. East Coast; to go home. There, they intend to wait for the world to heal before attempting to set out on their journey again.

An embarrassingly significant part of me is jealous. Jealous that they’ll get to see their friends and families. Jealous that they have a real house to return to. Jealous that they’ll be able to order Amazon packages. And pizza.

Obviously, it’s the lazy quitter in me who’s jealous. After all, The Boat Dream is a little bit hard.

I mean, it’s amazing and all, but it’s also pretty tough sometimes. Perhaps not surprisingly, lately, the idea of “having” to wake up from it — to return to the States (which would inherently lead to reuniting with my soul sisters and my real sister and my mom and Starbucks) — is a little more alluring than it should be.

But, despite the sound of alarm clocks buzzing and beeping all around us, we don’t actually have to wake up yet.

When we left The Bahamas and sailed west instead of east, we unwittingly set ourselves up quite flawlessly to weather a global pandemic. Jamaica has welcomed us with open arms. Granted, we arrived here two months ago, before the pandemic hit, but they have nevertheless graciously allowed us to stay and afforded us nothing but courteous hospitality while we’ve continued to dream our little dream.

Being able to wait, to shelter, to isolate here in our picture perfect little anchorage in Negril, has given us time.

Having time is giving us options.

The question every cruiser in the Caribbean must answer each year sometime before July 1st is, Where will I spend hurricane season? When we decided to sail west from The Bahamas, our plan was to work our way down the coast of Central America and then hide from this year’s storm season in Panama

— a move we hoped would ultimately set us up to transit the canal in early 2021.

Amazingly, so far, it looks as though we’ll still be able to make that happen — at least the Panama part. Our Jamaican visas expire May 29th. We’ve heard through the grapevine that it won’t be a problem to extend this date if necessary. But, we’re hopeful Panama will continue to slowly open its ports and marinas, still making it a no-brainer destination for us.

Like we’d planned all along. Or, almost anyway.

May 4th, 2020 marks one year since we drove away from everything and everyone we love to buy a boat and sail the world.

True to cliché, that day seems at once like a lifetime ago and just-last-week.

The lifetime-ago feeling makes me think we could be done — Yay us! We lived on a boat! We homeschooled. We traveled. We lived off the grid and out of the country. That’s good enough. We can go back now. Time to wake up.

But it’s not good enough and I know it’s the just-last-week feeling we should focus on.

We didn’t cash out to spend a year cruising The Bahamas. We cashed out to circumnavigate — to literally sail around the world. As it turns out, that takes time. And also, it isn’t easy. As much as I sometimes think I’d like to join a flotilla back to the States, I know we won’t.

We’re still in it. Sailboat Magic continues to cast its spell.

We’ll turn away from the northern route home that looks ever-tempting these days. We’ll let Panama’s promise of howler monkeys and sloths and living out our Someday-Thing drown out the Sirens’ song of Amazon delivery and dry sheets and hugging our loved ones that’s playing on an alarm clock loop — trying to lure us awake and out of our Boat Dream.

Because our Boat Dream isn’t finished with us and we’re not finished with it.

Robert Frost was close…

The ocean's lovely, dark and deep,
And we have promises to keep,
And a dream to live so still we sleep,
And a dream to live so still we sleep.