Is It 2020 Yet? Our Cruising Plan

Tickety Boo happy at anchor in the Bahamas

My friends, Matt and Lucy from The Larks of Independence, and I had been joking that, given our respective boat issues and projects, we'd see each other in the Bahamas in 2020. Scott and I certainly haven't been feeling like we'll ever make it out of Indiantown Marina this year before hurricane season starts up again. 2020 was starting to seem like a sadly realistic target.

But at least we were in good company. Matt and Lucy were stuck here in Florida too.

Then I saw on their Facebook page that they had broken free from the Sunshine State and made it to Bimini.

My first thought was:

"Yay! Way to go Matt and Lucy!"

My second thought was:

"I hate you guys. Why are we stuck in Florida and you're in the Bahamas?"

My third thought was:

"Ellen, you're a terrible person for thinking such things. You should be happy for them." 

Then I punished myself by not eating any chocolate for a full 20 minutes. Yes, I went without chocolate for 20 whole minutes. I know, hard to believe. But I deserved it.

After I had some chocolate, I felt much better about things. After all, we've only been working on boat projects for less than seven weeks. We've got friends that have been stuck here at Indiantown Marina for way longer than that working on their boats.

And we've actually ticked a number of things off of the list. Like new hatches.

We've also dealt with a number of things that weren't on the list. Like hydrolocking our engine.

All in all, we're not doing too bad. {She says frantically stuffing chocolate in her mouth in an effort to feel better about the rate of progress.}

The whole situation got me thinking about cruising plans. There's a saying among cruisers that plans are written in sand at low tide. When the tide comes in, your plans just wash away as though they never existed.

It was all a good reminder not to have too firm of plans and to just go with the flow. Easy to say, sometimes it's hard to do.

So while we do have a cruising plan of a sort, we're trying to keep it kind of vague because life has a way of keeping you on your toes. Sometimes, it seems like life is just getting in your way. Usually though, it's just presenting you with new opportunities that are cleverly disguised as boat projects.

If you are curious what our vague cruising plan is, it's to go to the Bahamas for the rest of this season, then bring the boat back to Indiantown where we'll haul out and work on some major boat projects. We'll probably head off to the Western Caribbean next season (November 2017) and putter around over there for a couple of years. After that who knows - although we are toying with the idea of crossing the Atlantic in a few years. But we'll see what life brings us.

What about you? What are your plans for the next few years?

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