Now that we are “living our dream”, all days should look like Heaven, right? Yeah! … but not really how things happen.
When we are offshore sailing, as Alex already wrote in a prior post, “Some Days are better than Others”. On each stop we make, there are still many land-based things that need to be handled regardless of how you we are living.
I am far from complaining the path we’ve chosen. Don’t get me wrong. We are definitely living our dream! But there are challenges and upsets on the way. And we need to reignite ourselves – renovate the spark – to keep moving and pursuing what we believe in.
We spent almost a month in the Bay Area and that was far longer than what we expected. We left Seattle 2 months ago and one of them was spent on the Bay Area. The Area deserves it. We had the opportunity to visit stunning sites like the Yosemite Park, reconnect with dear friends from different chapters of our lives that live in the area, enjoy San Francisco experiences (cable cars, Fleet Week, Pier 39, The ExploratOrium) among others. That was all a BLAST!
But over the last month, we also felt – for the first time in our trip -somewhat restrained in our eagerness to move on. Many things had been put “on hold” as we left Seattle two months ago. By that I mean important land-based items that were in our “To do list” since before leaving, but that never received the proper amount of attention once we started cruising. From accounting matters related to work, final activities from selling the apartment, internal boat “projects”, some adjustments to the home schooling program and materials… the list goes on. Feeling uneasy with this list, Alex and I made the decision of not going anywhere until we managed to clear these items off the list – with the intention that this would allows us to go back to cruising in a more relaxed way within a week or so. These days off would also allow me to travel for some work commitments I had on land.
With this decision in mind, we extended our stay at the Marina Bay in Richmond – a well-structured marina, in a very calm and isolated place in the east bay, and at an excellent value.
Not surprisingly, it ended up being more laborious than what we expected to take each task off the list and we saw ourselves staying longer than planned. In some ways we were getting accommodated and rooted in the marina with the entire infrastructure we created around us (we had our car in the parking lot, we were receiving all our mail in the marina, I found a yoga studio very close by).
But there was also frustration as we realized we were getting closer to our routine of living in a city. Imagine, I even managed to get involved in a car accident while driving in the area! We were feeling stuck with endless things to handle without moving.
We soon realized that this was too early to settle (despite as charming as the Bay Area is). Although something had changed in our willingness to move fast south, we were far from being ready to stop.
We had the eagerness to keep gaining nautical miles. So we set ourselves to the sea again, aiming Monterrey as the next stop. We were departing before closing all our items. The majority of them were ticked off the list – but to give an idea, we left our sofas being restored in Richmond (we will come back for them later by land as we also pick our car)…
Our passage to Monterrey was not that smooth – swells for half of the trip were rocking the boat. Luckily the wind was in the proper direction and intensity to allow us to do our first passage only by sails! Challenging passage but one that made us proud!
And Monterey… is just what we needed to renew our passion to explore new places. It is such a charming city where everything happens very close to the harbor: long beautiful beaches, scenic biking and walking roads, the local aquarium, parks, fresh markets, restaurants, and tons of sea life (sea lions sleeping in our dock!).
We feel surrounded by beauty. And convenience. To get an idea, I managed to do the dry cleaning of my working clothes and change the strings of my guitar in a musical instruments store just within a few blocks from the marina. And practice my yoga in a studio in front of the main harbor.
Monterey has already a sweet spot in our hearts. The kids enjoyed so much that asked us to stay longer. And we might stay a little longer…but we are okay to stay longer. We are choosing to stay from a place of curiosity and eagerness to explore and enjoy where we are and how we are.
The spark we needed to put us on fire again for our journey!
I Understand exactly what you mean 🙂 🙂