The End of an Era

That’s it – we’re done.  We’re back home.  Obviously, we haven’t been blogging…we’ve been in a weird head space.

 

It was emotional coming home…With every week on the ICW, we got a little closer to our return to society…to normal life.  Oddly enough, as we got closer, we became more and more accustomed to life on the boat.  We got better at reading the weather, more comfortable with things breaking, less bothered by delays…It was starting to get easier, and we were starting to figure it out.  WE WERE HAVING FUN!  MJSailing always said it takes a year before you really get into the groove, and we now understand what they meant.  It was getting good.

 

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.

 

We returned to the Mentor Harbor Yachting Club on July 16, 2015.  My folks threw a huge party and really made us feel welcome!  We had cake and expensive champagne.  We put on our smiles for the cameras.  It was amazing, but it really hit us hard – it was the end of an era.  Had we done everything we wanted to do?

 

Honestly, after TARA was safely tied up, we didn’t go back down to the boat for two months – not because we were sick of sailing, more that it was too emotional to be on Tara after living aboard for 10 months.  We couldn’t see her stuck in a marina…or something…

 

It has taken us some time to decompress, think about what we’ve done, and absorb all of the crazy adventures.  In the end, as expected, the hard times have turned into amazing stories that we reminisce about again and again.  In the end, IT WAS WORTH IT.

 

We’re happy to be back to a big bed and hot showers.  We have a comfortable place to live (thanks Mom & Dad!) and a nice grocery store around the corner.  Life is good – we’re home safe and have a lot of incredible memories.

 

In other ways, we are sad.  Operation Tropication has ended.  We know if we did it again, we would do a lot of things differently…we know we would do it BETTER…but that’s life right?  There’s always an opportunity to do it better, no?
Now it’s November.  Many of the friends we met along the way are probably down on their boats now, preparing for their crossing to the Bahamas and beyond.  Many of them are “snowbirds”, which we used to think was a dirty word, but now we have learned to appreciate.

 

We have started looking at boats/magazines/blogs again, thinking about the next adventure.  The reality is – once sailing is in your blood, there’s no escaping it.

 

COMMENCE PHOTO SEQUENCE: