What now?

We are finishing up what we refer to as a season.  A season for us and the majority of boats in this part of the world would be from October (when it is getting cold up north) till July or August  (when hurricane season arrives) or the weather is unbearable.  There are the few brave ones who will head north into the Sea and avoid the hurricanes and into cooler water.  For us the season ends in August.  We will leave Meshach in Mexico and head home via Airliner to Hawaii to re-group, see family, maintenance on the house, paper works and business that can't be done from the boat.

People ask us why we chose Mexico as a place to visit, live, sail... The answer is we love it. We love to travel experience new places, new people, live simple, spend time with our kids while they are still young and we relatively young.  The list goes on.  We love the adventure and the challenge and the pure simplicity of it and the lesson that you can live with so much less.

We've had a wonderful year away from home.  We have met families that will remain life time friends. We have grown closer as a family and have learned to appreciate all we have.  I have been looking back on our blog of this year and am a little disappointed with myself for not accurately portraying cruising life.  I guess it was clear when a friend at home said , "Wow it's like being on vacation for a year!"  Well that myth is easliy debunked.  Although who likes to write about doing laundry in a 18 gallon bucket in the grape stomping method and then hang it all over the boat at sunset and hope it dries by sunrise.  No one wants to air out the dirty laundry.  I will try to give a better insight to life on board as I find time to post.  

Our boat home, Meshach which is a fraction the size of our house home is just as much work if not more at times than the land based equivalent.   On the boat we are the gas company, electric company, water company, telecommunications, education department, and when needed our own therapist.  Which at times is daily.  Our days are quickly filled with the normal chores we would have at home.  Well we don't have to mow the yard, but we have our own garden of algae and barnacles that needs to be tended to every week or two or three...  On the boat we all share in the responsibilities of keeping our boat ship-shape. Everything has a place and when things are in place things work smoothly.  I keep telling myself that as I sit here at home with stuff scattered everywhere.  I think we are just luxuriating in the space we have now.  But soon this mess will soon be tended to.  The captain of this ship (house) has to get life on shore ship-shape as well.

So here we sit in our house-home amongst the must haves for land life.  We contemplate mowing the yard, washing the car, laundry, bill paying, grocery shopping and more. We are slowly plugging back into life on shore but dreaming of sunrise and sunsets on the water....