The God's Honest Truth

Sandy Hook, NJ

Ready for some honesty? I hope so because it's ALL coming out here...and it ain't all puppies and rainbows.

Sometimes cruising sucks. Sometimes it feels like just about everything that can go wrong does and what doesn't weighs on your mind like it's a certainty that it will. Sometimes I think I'm getting an ulcer and Ron swears he's got an aneurysm or two. This is the hardest thing we've ever done.

For the last two months we have been battling mechanical/engine problems one after another, and sometimes multiple at the same time. It's always something. Let's just suffice it to say that the last solid month we've just been pushing ahead hoping it will get better.

We hit a wall the other day that made us look hard at what we're doing and what we want to do. We left Sandy Hook, NJ for our first ocean and overnight passage, it was the last window before getting stuck in NJ for at least the next week with high winds. Winds were forecasted to be SW at 5-10 kts and although we were nervous, we were ready to take it on. We headed out and before we knew it we were in South winds at 19 kts and fighting building seas. We pushed on. We had a fuse to the engine instrument panel go out that Ron had to redo. We pushed on.

For EIGHT HOURS we tacked back and forth in the wind and when we discovered that we'd only made it 20  of the 130 miles south we were both totally defeated. Worried about electrical issues, bouncing in building seas and getting nowhere we turned around...and made it back in 3 hrs. On top of that, Lexie was getting antsy and had reached the edge of her bladder's abilities. Add this to the constant stress we'd had for sometime and, well, let's just say that our lids BLEW! We lost it, to put it mildly.

By the time we made it back to the anchorage and dodged the fish traps and buoys I.Was.Done.

All I kept telling Ron was that this was supposed to be fun. And it most certainly wasn't fun now. And he agreed.

The next morning I cried bawled into my pancakes (no joke) as we talked about our options. Did we really want to continue? Would it be better to just ship the boat to Florida and be there already? Would shipping the boat be a waste of money when we got to Florida and still didn't like it? Should we ship it home? I JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN DAMMIT!

At one point I'm pretty sure I had Ron talked into storing the boat and going off in a car on a camping adventure around the country. Then we talked to Jim and Chris who wisely told us to not make any rash decisions and that they too had been in a spot like this. Everyone has. I had chatted with Jessica (from MJSailing) when she was going through tough times, I've read countless blogs about similar experiences by others but none of that mattered because I didn't Get it. I even apologized to Jessica (when I was telling her about our ordeal) for what was surely sub par advice and a severe lack of empathy on my part when she'd had "one of those days" and needed someone to talk to. I did not get it. And until you experience it, you won't either. Don't try. Just know that if you give this life a try you will get it at some point and it's going to feel like it's sucking the life out of you. But you'll recover (one way or another) and you'll be better for it.

It wasn't all bad: We caught our first fish AND Lexie peed on the boat!
Celebrate the small successes, it'll help keep you sane.

We have since decided to carry on (in case you were panicking). We've been stuck in Sandy Hook hiding from those high winds for the last week waiting our turn to try again, which isn't all bad, we're actually looking forward to moving on again....imagine that! I can't make any promises that we won't, in fact, take off for that camping trip at some point, but for now we're here, we've got our big girl/boy panties on and we're heading south!