As I type this, it’s just before 10pm on Friday night. But not just any Friday night: we untied the lines yesterday, leaving our (now former) home marina. It’s a bit surreal, but in that way where there isn’t some big transition, or huge set of feelings that I thought I might feel. Instead, it’s just a sense of contentment and calm. This is what I’ve been planning and saving up to do for eleven years now, and it just feels right.
We’re in Roche Harbor on San Juan Island tonight, at the All-Catalina Rendezvous. Kinda the perfect way to start our cruising life, getting to spend time with other folks that own the same make of boat. I got up this morning at 5:45am to get us going out of the anchorage at Port Ludlow, where we spent our first night. The timing allowed us to ride the outgoing tide through Admiralty Inlet past Port Townsend, and we had a 2-4 knot current all the way from just outside Port Ludlow to halfway across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Despite not having any favorable wind to sail on, the currents carried us along quite quickly while I ran the engine at a relaxed pace, and we still were seeing 7-9 knots for the first several hours of the day.
Maybe those big feelings will really hit in a few days. Maybe Monday, when neither of us need to worry about going in to work. Maybe when we check in to Canada early next week. Or maybe the anticipation of those feelings will be all we get, and instead the slower pace of life now will just slowly grow on us, and before we know it we’ll be settled in.
What I do know is I’m very happy and content, and at the moment full of wine. After a wine sharing party (with enough snacks to count as dinner) there was a sing-along party with someone playing a guitar, and I had a lovely time singing along with people to songs I only kinda knew.
Tomorrow my partner participates in a docking clinic, and I’ll be showing people all the various upgrades I’ve made to our boat. With all the work I’ve put in the last few years, there is very little I like more than telling people about my boat! And showing folks with similar vessels the modifications and upgrades I’ve made and being able to ask about the things they’ve done makes me really happy.
