What's Different? Reflections After A Year on Our Forever Cruise

Dani on Ghostlight posed the question the other day, coincidentally right around what I realized was our one year “cruise-iversary”, a term I’d not come across before reading a blog post from my friend Behan on Sailing Totem. (It’s the anniversary of when you left to go cruising, in case that needed some explanation.) “How does it feel to have been full-time cruising for so long now?” Which I heard as, “What’s different?”

*Nick and Dani and Jeremy in Calypso’s cockpit last year in Annapolis*

This isn’t our first cruising adventure. All of our other cruises, though, have been round trips of sorts. A trip with a defined end time-wise, anyway, even if that end was a different geographical point that where we started from, as was the case with our first cruise. Those cruises have been 3 years, 3 weeks, 3 months. 6 months. You get the point.

Until this most recent dock-leaving, our cruises have always been a pause from a more traditional land-based existence. Now, even though there’s a home base in Averill (and a more elastic one with parents and kids in the US), this is our existence. Breaks from now on will be from the boat to visit land, not the other way around.

*Some of the crowd from last fall’s going away party at Fishing Bay Yacht Club*

On the one hand, it’s easy to dismiss this “what’s different” question. We’re sailing on the same boat, after all. You’d think we have our cruising chops pretty well honed, down to only rearranging galley stuff every couple of months instead of every other week, being extremely comfortable with the self-sufficient aspect of our lives on this small vessel.

But there are a few things that are different, and a couple of them have snuck up on me a little more forcefully that I might have thought.

It’s fall back home (I’m using the word deliberately, even though home truly is right here with me right now), my favorite time of year especially in Vermont. Family video calls come from the lake where days are getting shorter and crisper. Friends have written asking if we’ll be at the boat show, or back for Thanksgiving, or to invite us to weddings and anniversary celebrations. No, we have to say. Not for a couple of years anyway. Between cyclone season and distances to cover, and the restrictions on visas, my best guess is that we won’t be back until sometime in 2027. I’m already scheming on how to make that visit last a while, timed to take in important events like our niece’s college graduation, my 40th (!!!) high school reunion. Not being back every year is hitting me harder than I expected. And yes, family is visiting (kids were with us for the Panama canal transit, and everyone will be in Tahiti for Christmas), but it’s not the same as being in beloved places with loved ones.

The last 3 times we’ve taken off, twice on Calypso and once on Mischief, were shakedowns of a sort. New England with Calypso in 2021, after a major series of boat projects including an entire new mast; we had to be back in Annapolis by early October for the boat show. The Caribbean on Calypso, leaving in November of 2022 with a hard return of April, 2023 to make the total solar eclipse and (more critically) Bee’s graduation from college. The Bahamas on Mischief, heading south after the boat show in 2023 and returning again for a hard deadline in April for Julian’s college graduation.

*Sailing Calypso off of the Naval Academy, 2021*

*Setting up the camera for group shots as we gathered for the eclipse, 2023*

*Bee college graduation (with my parents) 2023*

*Kids visited us on Mischief in the Bahamas Christmas 2023*

I hadn’t realized the security in those returns. Not only seeing family and friends in favorite places, but also being able to stock the boat with preferred foods, shopping in familiar stores. If we’d forgotten something, it was only a matter of months before we would be back where it was easily sourced. If we ran out of anything, we’d only have to do without for a short amount of time.

*Drinking the last Heady Topper en route to St Thomas, 2022*

Now, as I realize our rolled oat supply for granola is gone, and I “should” have bought more masa harina, and we’re hoarding the last of the Vermont cheddar cheese and the parmesan and those aren’t available here and oh geez it’s endless. . . Family visiting at Christmas already know they’re tasked with helping us fill some of those empty pantry spaces.

Except . . . should they? The more sustainable choice, both from an environmental AND a long-term-solution angle, would probably be to eschew the familiar (I draw the line at Vermont maple syrup, sorry - THAT is always going to be tucked into someone’s luggage) and embrace the new. No granola makings? Find a new breakfast staple. Maybe it should just be toasted coconut shards over yogurt with a drizzle of honey. No Vermont cheddar? Make sure to stock up on Brie, especially the canned stuff, when I see it. Flour tortillas will have to replace the corn ones. And so on. A world of new ingredients and unexplored food traditions is at my fingertips. Why am I so insistent on old standbys?

*Vermont maple syrup from the spot just down the road*

It’s taken me a year, I think, to come to terms with the fact that this is our new reality. It’s been a year of amazing milestones, lots of sea miles. Visits to places most people only know from calendar photographs. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

*Marquesas. Not just a line in a CSN song*

Except if there were a transporter somewhere close by, I’d probably nip back home for a weekend of sweaters and cowboy boots, or something on the grill and an icy margarita in my hands. All surrounded by loved family and friends, of course.

I’ll still load my bags with goodies to bring back to the boat.