In the sailing world, people like to remind you that a “Sailor’s plans are written in the sand at low tide.” This sentiment is 100% true but it’s one that I, as a planner, have struggled with at various times in our boat journey. My latest struggle happened during our October transition period between island life and boat life. The original plan was to spend one week at my parents’ house, visiting with family and friends, taking care of some doctors’ appointments (which I had scheduled months ago) and packing. After a week, we would pack up the VW and drive back to Virginia where Alaya waited.
This great plan was thrown out the window about halfway through our visit when Lucas developed a cough. Pretty soon, we were both sick as dogs. We haven’t been sick in over a year, so really it was only a matter of time. We decided to delay our return to Alaya until we were feeling better. I was bummed. After six months away from Alaya, I was really anxious to get back to her.
The next few days consisted of us recuperating at my parents’ house in Chelsea. They were wonderful hosts and luckily, they didn’t catch whatever we had. Since we were home so much, we got to hang out with my nephews, Lee and Elliott, who stay with my mom a of couple days a week. Apparently, their immune systems are way stronger than ours thanks to pre-school and siblings. My favorite memory with these cuties was painting our toenails together (Elliott’s mom, Megan, joined the nail party too!). The boys were pumped and wanted different colors on all their nails. I was also called in for emergency polish repair multiple times during the week. They didn’t want anyone else to do it – hilarious!
Before we got sick, Lucas had started our first of many boat projects for the season. A while back, we acquired a spare transmission from a sister ship in Florida. It had been sitting in the garage at Lucas’ parents’ house ever since. Lucas decided this fall was the time to rebuild it and swap out Alaya’s original transmission with this newly rebuilt one. Why this fall? Lucas had already given me the required 6-month advance notice that we needed to lift our engine for the 4th time (I’m told that is way above the average number of times normal boaters do this). He wanted to replace the damper again (you may recall that we replaced the damper last fall before leaving Lake Erie but we realized, once the engine was torn apart, that it was the wrong one). So, since Pierre was already going to be out of his hole, Lucas wanted to replace the transmission too.
So, Lucas started this process in my parents’ basement. He dismantled the transmission and started to clean it up. Unfortunately, during the dismantling, Lucas and my dad broke a snap ring. Of course, this particular snap ring was not included in the rebuild kit Lucas had ordered. So, we needed to order this part (and a few others) before the transmission could be rebuilt. He was also slowed down when we got sick. We decided to finish rebuilding the transmission once we were back in Virginia. So, we had the parts shipped to Aunt Fran and Marty in Williamsburg, VA, our next stop.
While Lucas was working on the transmission, I spent a lot of time organizing our stuff, now dividing it between three piles: 1. Things going back to Alaya 2. Things going back with us to Mackinac Island next summer 3. Things going into our storage unit. It feels like we have been sorting our stuff for the past three years, I think it is now a constant state of being for two vagabonds like us.
I also spent time trying to figure out our health insurance plan for the next six months. I won’t bore you with the details, I’ll just say that figuring out healthcare insurance has been one of the most frustrating parts of this new transient lifestyle.
So just like that, one week quickly turned into almost two weeks in Chelsea. In the heat of the moment, it felt like we were never going to get back to the boat. In hindsight though, it was only a few days delay and it was a good reminder that getting my heart set on a specific plan is a fool’s errand, especially a sailing fool. The silver lining to our screwed-up plan was that we were in town (and feeling better) for my sister’s annual Halloween party. It was great to see everyone one last time before we headed south.
Recuperated, we packed up the car for our next leg. Once again, my dad doubted the storage capacity of the VW. Once again, we proved him wrong by jamming all of our stuff, including a transmission and partially dismantled cart (more on that later) in the trunk. It barely fit but if it fits, it ships at 50 miles per gallon!
Alaya-bound at last.
