Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Savannah Sails - the final chapter

So this is it, the final chapter… Savannah has officially been SOLD.  We are ecstatic after a year of waiting, reducing the price, getting our hopes up, being disappointed, being patient, reducing the price again… you get the picture.  Selling a boat is not for the faint of  heart.  At the same time, I have tears in my eyes typing this.  The Savannah book has been closed.

While parts of this transition have been way easier than it should have been, I think from a cruising perspective, being in limbo has been the worst.  Any time we go to make a big decision – should we move?  Should we buy Andy a new truck? Should we buy a house? – it’s always…”well if the boat would sell…..”  And then when one of us has a bad day, there’s “we can always hop back on the boat” and then we spend hours trying to figure out how we could actually make that work.

We wish the new owner fair winds and hope maybe we get to see her again some day…  wouldn’t that be funny?  (Jake swears he’s going to buy her back when he gets older)

A funny story, we finally decided to bite the bullet and put a contract on a house (more on that in a minute).  The VERY NEXT MORNING, I wake up to an email from our broker in Malaysia saying we had finally sold Savannah.  How’s that for timing?
After much deliberation we have decided to move away from the ocean and move closer to my family in GA.  Assuming all goes through on the house, we’ll be living an hour or so away on a beautiful river (of course we had to have water somewhere), 7+ acres of land, and wait for it…. two wineries less than 5 miles away.  Other than the wineries though, we’re out in the sticks.  It seems the one thing about cruising that stuck with all of us is isolation, we’re good with it and most of the family prefers it (the male portion).

I know I haven’t written in forever and really didn’t live up to my promise of keeping everyone up to date on the day to day happenings of re-entering society, but once you’re here on land, you suddenly realize you don’t really have a whole lot to tell and you second guess why anyone would want to read about your silly little life anyway.

I did take a few key things away from this experience:
  1. Our outlook on life has been changed forever.  We had a few obstacles thrown at us this year that would have sent me into a depression 6 years ago.  Now, I just had a few good cries, put my big girl pants on and went about fixing things.  In the end, it could always be worse and I truly believe everything happens for a reason.  We are, on the whole, much more positive people (not that I think we were really all that negative to start with).
  2. I realize this will be a revelation that contradicts itself… I really do like stuff.  And I really have a hard time buying new stuff.  I love pretty things, love decorating, love shopping and am really sad about some of the stuff I got rid of years ago (yes, I do remember).  But I cannot for the life of me bring myself to pay 2016 prices and I feel as guilty as the day is long when I see myself starting to collect things.  It sucks the pretty right out of those things.  This one is going to take a while to recover from.
  3.  Finally, my kid is amazing and I owe most of it to the cruising life style.  He’s adaptable, he’s smart, mature, witty, and extremely well behaved.  Some of that was hard work on our part, but such a large part can be attributed to the diverse environment he has been raised in and the wonderful people we met along the way.
  4. Finally, Finally, My husband is also awesome, for the record, but I think everyone new that….

Andy and I do, truly realize how blessed we are and are looking forward to this next phase in life.  Thank you all for following us, whether it was over years, or just a few months.  You made our days at sea shorter and boosted our egos more than once.  I’m sure the prayers we got carried us further than we know.  And thanks to all of those cruisers that came before us (and kept blogs so I could be convinced to leave) and will come after us (please keep a blog so I can read it!).  It’s getting less and less free out there and the risks are just different than they were 20 years ago, or even when we started.  But there’s still so much to see and experience.  It’s our turn now to see and experience home.  Wish us luck.

Savannah out.


6 comments:

Sherry said...

AWESOME!! We closed the deal on the old Soggy Paws a couple of weeks ago (YAY!!) and just re-launched the new Soggy Paws today. Congrats on selling Savannah. I totally agree about the "stuff" issue. Hopefully you won't get over it too much. You really don't need all that STUFF!! If you're near Atlanta maybe we'll swing by sometime. My sister lives in Brooks and that's our landing point when we come back to the US.

Sherry said...

AWESOME!! We closed the deal on the old Soggy Paws a couple of weeks ago (YAY!!) and just re-launched the new Soggy Paws today. Congrats on selling Savannah. I totally agree about the "stuff" issue. Hopefully you won't get over it too much. You really don't need all that STUFF!! If you're near Atlanta maybe we'll swing by sometime. My sister lives in Brooks and that's our landing point when we come back to the US.

Just a Minute said...

I had to laugh because your four points of change could have been written by me about our time cruising. Ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto. Here's to life on land. Cheers.

Anonymous said...

Hello Savannah..(les?) Thank you for the stories, thank you for the honesty, and thank you for the inspiration. In the last three years my wife and I have sold our house, bought a boat, and we are now living our second summer of magic on the Puget sound. I have enjoyed your perspective, and I will miss your blog. Fair winds in all you do!

Kevin,
https://svwingsofthemorning.wordpress.com/ Our blog.. of course.

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Unknown said...

As I was cleaning out my bookmarks, I saw your blog again. Congrats to you on your life changing journey!

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