The Freak Out

February 20 to February 23 was the event in my office I had committed to attending in person. I was to lead a training session for nearly a full day, then facilitate a few other sessions. Coworkers were flying in from the East Coast and our Sydney, Australia office; it was a big deal. And, it was one of the reasons we decided to park it in Half Moon Bay for a month – relatively easy access to the office. Harry had plans to be away quite a bit (work on reassembling and selling an old racing dune buggy that had been taking up space in his mother’s garage for years, and work-work). We had a string of friends and some of my coworkers visiting. All of this is to say that there was a lot going on from the time we arrived till February 23, and if you happened to glance at our location box on the website, you would have seen that I had February 24-ish in my mind as the next departure date.

However, between some nasty weather that rolled through, Harry’s slow-ish progress and other commitments he made, by February 23 it became very clear that we weren’t going anywhere. And when I got home and sat down to the quiet that Friday afternoon, after a wildly busy and successful week, I realized that I had nothing more to do. No more paychecks were going to be hitting my account. And weeks, actually months*, stretched out in my mind’s eye where I was to be on the boat, often alone, without much to do, and stationary. The FREAK-OUT began. Harry left for the weekend, and it was a cold, wet, windy weekend. Limited wifi at this harbor so no YouTube ukulele lessons, Duolingo Spanish practice, or binge-watching Netflix. Reading through California cruising guides warned of treacherous entrances along the northern coast, and crowded + expensive cruising grounds in the south. The FREAK-OUT continued.

*Months, you ask? What happened to hopping down the California coast and straight into Mexico, you wonder? Technically, hurricane season runs June to November. There are safe spots to park a boat for the season, but they are very hot and dry and quite unpleasant. And, if we were to get there by June, we’d have to hurry, spending little-to-no time exploring along the way. The alternatives are to say f-it and go to Hawaii or straight to French Polynesia, but I really want to spend a healthy amount of time in Mexico and Harry has some work commitments this summer. The reality is we have to “cruise” Southern California for a few months and be parked in Santa Barbara (ish) and San Diego (ish) for a few months, each.

After a few days, I pulled on my big girl pants. I got my fishing license ($48 in California, ouch), found and pulled our crab pots by myself a few times (with actual crabs!). Harry came home and we went to a 10:40am showing of Black Panther on a Tuesday (retirement has to have some benefits). I hit the gym a few times, have been proactively hanging out with friends, and started learning decorative knot tying.
I’m still not happy about the timeline, but without much of a choice I’m going to have to make the best of it. Hopefully the next harbor will have more reliable wifi, and be warmer. But then again, I’ll be alone for longer stretches and further away from friends. Sigh. At least everyone is going to get some pretty neat knot-art for Christmas this year.

Update March 9: Literally the day after I published this post, the sun came out and the wifi got significantly better (it got worse the next day, but that’s how I figured out it was our humongous steel fishing boat neighbor that when in the slip blocked our wifi booster line-of-site to the harbormaster. We spun the boat around; problem solved). I found a good rhythm for myself between crabbing, the gym, work on the boat, knot tying w/a strong assist from YouTube, and more. I haven’t been bored all week. Maybe I’m cut out for this life after-all 😉

Sydney Coworkers Visiting! Adam, Kamran, Gad, Rami, Ray, Harry