Giving Thanks

While all of you Americano's sit down to feast on some gobble, Nicole and I peer at the calendar and realize it's our 2-year anniversary since sailing away under the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco. The synchronicity of it also being Turkey Day here in PNG, we dive into the bowels of our little freezer and pull out some Scotch Filet steaks from Vanuatu, our last of the treasured organic top grade beef we still have onboard DK. Accompanied by some sweet potatoes and some fresh greens, tonight we will have our own type of special meal to celebrate the big events.

It's been 2 years and roughly 14,600 nautical miles since we slipped out of Pelican Harbor and headed south to Monterey Bay. Looking back on it all, it seems like yesterday, and at the same time it seems like a decade. It's amazing how much our confidence has grown, how much better we know our boat, and how much more we trust ourselves to be able to deal with almost any situation that comes up. We have certainly slowed way down and most of the time we have learned to become more patient and flexible. Sometimes we still struggle with the patience piece, not sure if we will ever make peace with that one.

In the last 2 years, we've traveled to 11 different countries and we're on our way to number 12. We have counted 64 different islands we have anchored at since leaving Mexico; countless more we have visited. We've sailed along with humpback whales, gray whales, false killer whales, pilot whales, spinner dolphins, pan-tropical spotted dolphins, and bottlenose dolphins. We've eaten abundantly from the sea: crayfish, crab, mahi mahi, wahoo, yellowfin tuna, and reef fish. We've spent time and shared stories with so many great local people, as well as the hundreds of yachties we have met from all over the world.

We realize we are fortunate to have this life and yet we have chosen it and made it happen. We are the first to admit it is not always easy, and sometimes it just plain sucks. Sometimes we feel very disconnected from our families and our close friends. We sometimes dream of having a little piece of land, a little house, a big garden, and access to beautiful open spaces where we can walk and run and ride our bikes. These are all the things we have given up to be where we are now.

It's been 2 years and we are finally almost out of the Pacific Ocean. We have been through Polynesia and Melanesia, and we are on our way to Micronesia. Then, in April of 2009, it will be completely new worlds, new cultures, new languages, and new religions when we sail into the islands of Indonesia. We are not even half way around the world, but we are almost half way done with our journey. That means the next 2+ years we have some serious miles to put under our keel. Palau will be our last extended "rest stop" of over 2 months. Right now we are looking forward to that rest.

So today we give thanks that the dream has taken us this far already and is still going strong. We celebrate our health, our boat and home DK, all the people who have welcomed us into their homes, and our friends and family that have believed in us.

Another Lesson

We are still learning to be patient and flexible. Our time in Papua New Guinea was not what we had intended. Arriving in Kavieng we had a long list of things we had planned to do, obligations we had promised to keep, and hopes to give back and learn more. When we arrived everything changed.

Things in the South Pacific are not like they are in the States in many ways. Perhaps it is the heat that lulls everything into a slow motion crawl, mostly I think it is the culture. We are learning to plan on anything and expect nothing. It is a long process. After many days of trying to connect with our contacts, find the marine biology textbooks we were to deliver, talk to every propane agent in town, and work on our own personal to do list we realized nothing was going to happen as we had hoped.

It was hard for us to accept we were at the mercy of fate and circumstance and that we couldn't fulfill any of the goals we had planed. Reef surveys and trainings would have to be done by someone else, marine biology textbooks would have to be delivered by another boat next season, and we would have to search for someone else to teach us about diesel marine engines running on coconut oil.

Once we let go of our initial plan we made a new one. But when the winds forced us to stay in town one more day we had an honest talk with ourselves. We accepted we are both tired and ready to "be" somewhere for a while. While going to visit some incredible anchorages in New Hanover sounded like a great idea, we realized we didn't have the juice to keep going. We wouldn't enjoy engaging with people in three different villages, we didn't want to patiently go about our business while people watched us, cook, clean, read, and shower, and we couldn't appreciate yet another beautiful place or even the opportunity to maybe get some surf.

In the beginning, I was thinking what you might be. How can you be tired? You are in Papua New Guinea? You don't have a job? You have a great life. All true. But this is our life and sailing is our job. And we are now tired and uninspired. Just saying that I still have trouble accepting it.

Perhaps our initial plans fell through to give us the opportunity to be in Palau earlier, maybe it is to allow us to make it to the "stunning" Hermit Islands before the northwesterly winds pipe up, maybe it is for no reason at all. But like I said, we are learning to be patient and flexible. Being honest with ourselves and being willing to accept our feelings and our inability to change circumstances is all part of it. Unfortunately, I don't think this is the last we'll be learning these lessons.