Waking Up From a Dream

What happens when you wake up from a dream and realize you did it?    After years spent dreaming and then planning, we sailed off into the sunset fifteen winters in a row … and now…..

We just sold our boat,  s/v Winterlude.

We’re both still in a bit of shock.  We didn’t anticipate officially putting the boat on the market and having an offer the first day.

So now we’re boatless?  And more than a bit at loose ends….

Originally the “dream” was to buy my own molas in the San Blas Islands, Panama.  But at the time, I didn’t own a boat and was a single mom starting her own business with two almost teenagers.

And didn’t even know how to sail.  I just thought it would be amazing to sail off into the sunset.  And we did.

We cruised with the dolphins, eagle rays and sea turtles through the Western Caribbean, Belize, Bay Islands.  We beat to windward against the prevailing easterlies to round the corner and sail south to Providencia & San Andres, Colombia.

We danced barefoot on the sand.

We spent almost a year cruising through the San Blas Islands (bought a stack of molas more than 6″ high … one at a time), to Cartegena, Colombia.  Discovered one of our favorite ever places in Sapzurro, Colombia (mainland coast border with Panama)  Six years, six months at a time.

We sailed the Great Bahamas Banks the through the Exumas, spending as much time as we could in the Exumas Land & Sea Park – another of our favorite places.

For years I wanted to sail to Cuba …. and finally this year, that dream came true.

The dreams all came true – due to hard work and perseverance, alot of sweat mixed with fleeting moments of terror.  And, of course, “fixing things in exotic locales”.

For the past several years, we’ve been wondering … what next?  What’s the next dream?  Beyond Cuba.  And the answer?  We’re not quite sure, but it doesn’t involve living aboard our precious bluewater sailboat going nowhere.

So now we’re wide awake and looking forward to the next dream.  It may involve a different boat, we just haven’t quite figured (or agreed upon) what kind of boat.  We’re busy putting together spreadsheets of criteria of what we’re looking for and we’ll be sharing.

The first step is to figure out what we want to do and where we want to cruise.  We’re examining the things we didn’t get to do with s/v Winterlude that maybe we missed – skipped over in our haste to get the boat to Florida, outfitted and jump off for the exotic Caribbean.

They say you shouldn’t have regrets, but …  we regret not getting to spend time introducing our grandkids to the cruising lifestyle.  We regret not taking the time to cruise the Chesapeake Bay.  Not cruising Maine.  Not anchoring with the wild horses off Cumberland Island.   We’re not sure if there’s a pattern here… but maybe.

In future posts, I’ll share our experiences attempting to sell the boat ourselves – do’s and don’ts.  How To with specific info on designing a successful blog page, where to put it, how to market it, where to advertise it. We learned alot and had over 3000 people look at our online ad and more traffic than we wanted inconveniencing us while we were still enjoying Key West.  (Tip #1 – if you want to sell your boat yourself, you have to be COMMITTED to selling it, not out sailing around or cruising to Cuba anytime the weather turns nice.)   🙂

Plus, because of the unexpected timing selling s/v Winterlude (congratulations to Bill & Sally who I know will love her as much as we did), but I still haven’t even finished my series of posts about our last adventure cruising Florida’s west coast.

Stay tuned as we sort out life after bluewater cruising … or maybe I should say life between cruising adventures!

Cheers!  Jan & David … boatless, landlocked and more than a little sad in Central Illinois…