We travel light
Day one of being homeless: we moved into a local Airbnb for a couple of days. The first thing to note was the extraordinarily large amount of space. Normally, we are always near each other on the boat. Today, we can sit across the room and be far enough away not to touch.
The TV seems massive. Having a real sofa and chairs is like a new luxury. A shower with endless water and a smart toilet, wow. Okay, the smart toilet is really kinda nice. A heated seat, warm bidet water, and even a ‘massage’ function. I’ve never needed an instruction manual to use the loo before.
We spent time taking care of some last-minute paperwork stuff for the boat and enjoyed time lazing on the sofas.
A couple of days later, we are off to Australia. We have decided to spend a couple of months in the USA to check out some areas to live. We really don’t have high hopes about finding a life in the US again. But we also have some personal stuff to take care of.
To leave New Caledonia, almost every flight connects via New Zealand or Australia. Our thoughts: if we are going to pick one, let’s do Australia so we can see our friends again because we can stopover for a couple of weeks. AirCalin advertises that they have no bag limit. We get two bags each included in the price of the ticket and can pay for as many as we need in addition to this. We have seven checked bags and two carry-ons each.
What is in our bags? Well, we have only about one bag of clothes each. We have one bag completely full of camera gear. Another bag has things like the nautical clocks and bell/barometer from Cream Puff. These have too much sentimental value to be included in the sale. The clocks are mounted to a piece of wood that came from our old sailboat Water-Melon. No way are we going to part with these.
We also have our Christmas bling. We’ve collected ornaments from all the places we’ve visited. I can’t wait for our first Christmas where we can combine these with the ones we have in our storage facility. It’ll be great fun decorating the tree and taking a trip down memory lane.
We have a ceramic vase from Tahiti that I purchased for Cindy on her birthday. With the extra foam, this takes quite a bit of space. The vase was handcrafted by a local Tahitian artist. This is perhaps the most treasured item in our bags. It is placed in the suitcase next to our bronze koala statue.
Why don’t we ship items? We could, but shipping is more expensive than paying for an extra bag on the plane. The more difficult issue we face is really more about being able to move this amount of luggage through an airport. And we added a stop in Brisbane to the mix.
For the past couple of years, once we realized we are reaching the point where we may be selling the boat, we have been shipping some stuff home. The tea towel and trinket collection went a few months ago. As did moolas and other valuables. But this isn’t an easy process anymore. Believe it or not, the USA started to add tariffs to the value of each box even if it contains used personal goods that originated in the USA. The costs just kept going up. In addition, some post offices have halted shipments of packages to the USA since the cost and tariffs are a constant moving target.
It takes 2 ½ hours to fly from New Caledonia to Brisbane. Just a couple of months ago, it took us 7 days to do the same journey.
On the plane, we agree things haven’t quite set in yet. We have often left the boat when we took our inland excursions. It feels like we are just leaving for another road trip. It still hasn’t really hit us that we’ll never see the boat again. Still waiting for that penny to drop.
In Australia, we’re greeted by two of our dearest Aussie friends, Bill and Marcelle. Bill has a truck. We manage to fill the back. After big hugs and a glance at the two luggage carts stacked high, I hear Bill say, “Good God. Did you bring the entire contents with you?”
Lunch with Bill and Marcelle
Back with our regular Friday group aboard ‘My Way’ for Friday Follies
From the other side of ‘My Way’
I have recently had a small epiphany
For the first time in my life, I have no long-range plan. I’ll try not to get too deep here, but it’s a strange feeling.
My entire adult life, I have had a plan. There was always something out there on the horizon that I was working toward. For those who knew me when I was younger, you’ll remember me talking about how one day I was going to buy a boat, sail over the horizon and perhaps never be seen again.
Cindy and I started talking seriously about that dream not long after we were married. And remarkably, the dream itself never really changed. The details certainly did. The boat got bigger. The budget got bigger. As we got older, we realized that our romantic vision of sailing off into the sunset would be considerably more enjoyable if we were comfortable and didn’t have to worry about money.
So we worked toward it. Careers, saving, investing, planning, researching boats, learning what we needed to learn. Decisions we made along the way were often influenced by that eventual goal. There was always a reason for what came next.
And eventually, we did it.
That is the part I hadn’t really thought about until recently. The plan wasn’t just about sailing. The plan itself had been part of my life for decades. It gave me something in the distance to aim toward. Even when it was years away, it was there.
Then, once we were sailing, the planning didn’t stop. There was always another destination, another country, another ocean, another season. Where would we go next? What weather window were we waiting for? Where would we spend hurricane or cyclone season? What would we see along the way? Life had a natural forward momentum to it.
Now that chapter has ended. And I’ve suddenly realized that, perhaps for the first time since I was a young man, there isn’t another grand plan waiting behind it.
There are certainly things we want to do. Places we want to see. In fact, that list is very long still. We need to decide where we want to live and what the next version of our life looks like. But those are choices rather than the plan. There isn’t some enormous objective sitting twenty years out on the horizon that everything else is leading toward.
At first, that feels slightly unsettling. I’ve spent most of my life knowing, at least broadly, where I was going. But I’m beginning to wonder whether that’s actually the interesting part.
Maybe after spending decades planning for someday, we’ve finally reached the point where there doesn’t have to be a someday.
We can still choose somewhere because we like it. Stay until we don’t. Change our minds. Travel because somewhere sounds interesting rather than because it’s on the route to somewhere else. There doesn’t necessarily have to be a five-year plan, a ten-year plan, or another enormous goal to accomplish. I’m starting to think short-term goals are going to be our future.
For someone who has always had a destination somewhere over the horizon, that’s going to take a little getting used to.
But perhaps having no long-range plan isn’t the absence of a plan at all.
Perhaps, for the first time, that’s the plan.
