Still adjusting??? Summer in Florida

We try to go to the beach every week, reminds us how
lucky we still are.

It’s been awhile since we posted.  Lots of things have happened and lots of stuff still happening…  I’ve changed jobs, Jake has started school, and Andy has started his job search after being a much needed stay at home dad all summer.

Lots of stuff has been wonderful…we see my family relatively often.  I have an iPhone and can text my best friend whenever I want.  I can even push that stupid handset button and hear her voice every once in a while!  I can order a pizza with nothing but an emoji, and believe it or not, I know what an emoji is! 

Blowing out his candles on the specially requested (and
very delicious, strawberry cake made my mother.

Jake just celebrated his 10^th birthday.  I cannot believe he is 10 years old.  We left San Diego when he was 4 ½  and now I have a double digit kid.  Wow.  I don’t know how much of it is because of us, his experience traveling with us, genetics, or just plain luck, but Andy and I have the best kid ever.  As many changes as we’ve gone through in the last six months, that little guy just rolls with the punches.   We try to take his lead even when not all in the 1^st world is what we had hoped for…

Savannah hasn’t sold yet, so there’s that.  We now have bills and lots of “stuff.”  Anyone who’s been to our house will laugh at that as we have one room that is completely empty and with the exception of Jake’s bedroom, all the bedrooms are just that, rooms with beds in them.  Our clothes are in those big tupperware like containers on the floor.  So when I say “lots of stuff,”  that’s by cruiser standards… But repurchasing your entire house…just think that through…

 The psychological part has been harder than I thought.  I feel lost sometimes.  I sit at my desk and think, really?  My days are filled with powerpoints, project plans and conference calls.  Really?  I still get overwhelmed at the store…particularly with fashion.  I don’t know if the fashion trends these days are just really bad or if I was off the grid so long, I just can’t get back in.  I used to like shopping for clothes…now I just get overwhelmed.  I work from home now so I don’t feel quite as lost as I wear my “boat” clothes all day and don’t have to fix my hair or wear makeup.  In that way, my tension is released…I don’t have to figure out what to wear or if I look “cute” today.  Andy doesn’t care and truth be told, is still hanging on to a few of those short/t-shirt combos that probably should have stayed in Malaysia! 

Jake has taken up Taekwondo...like father, like son

I find myself trying not to judge people on their choices, which is very hard.  The things people complain about blow my mind, but at the same time, I find myself falling into old habit as well, always in a rush and trying to do everything myself (The bagel place down the street from us is THE slowest business in the US, and why can’t I just leave the towels folded the way Andy does them?  Nevermind they don’t look pretty in the cabinet and its different with every load.).  Andy’s missing the diving, the boat driving, all the critters and truth be told, all that whining about boats breaking down and pressure with being totally responsible for us… he misses all that and more.   He likes being Captain. Some days I think if we could figure it out, we would be back on the boat quicker than American Airlines could get us there….

I'm not sure how long I'll keep updating the but do know I'm not ready to stop just yet.  If you're still reading, I'll still write...

And we're back in the water!

I never thought this day would come but for the love of Pete (and some understanding immigration officials in Malaysia) we are finally back in Telaga.  After an uneventful launch from G&T we discovered our anchor windlass (with the new $800 motor) needed replacing.  We discovered this when it decided to quit working at 10:30 at night with the moon not yet risen.  Anywhoo…nothing a well placed mooring ball and a reliable credit card won’t fix (can you get a credit line increase without a job????).  Our trip was uneventful except for the strange emotions passing throughout the boat.  Knowing this was our last “cruise” together was bittersweet.  Thailand, not being our favorite place in the world, was a weird way to end it.  But I think we did our best and thanks to some McKaskle style provisioning and a goofy kid on board, we pushed through just fine.

So today we checked in to Malaysia (some day I’ll tell the story why that was a big deal) and tried to rent a car to do all the work horse type things we need to do, but no cars were available so we decided to be tourists instead.  We took a taxi (too much walking in Phuket made us quick to jump in the car) to the Oriental Village not too far from the anchorage and we did all the silly things we put off last time.  We rode the skycar up the hill to a beautiful view of the anchorage and marina and well, all of Langkawi.  We experienced a silly 6D film that had us riding a roller coaster through the desert.  Jake got to fulfill his dreams of running with the hamsters by zipping himself up in a plastic ball and running around a pond.  Don’t ask me the draw, but I’m glad he did it because I haven’t laughed that hard in awhile.  And finally, we rode the paciderms (aka Elephants!).

A great view of our anchorage
and the marina.  Andy tried to show where Savannah is.

I had high hopes as did the rest of the crew, but in the end, I felt sorry for the poor old elephant.  He looked run down and rode hard.  We took an extremely expensive 10 minute stroll through the “trail” and enjoyed the view from above and the whole novelty of it.  But in the end, it didn’t hold a candle to our 5 minute ($7) trot with the camels in Australia.  To be fair, we’ve been blessed with a lot of time with elephants…we used to live near and were very good friends with the elephant trainer in Norfolk, VA.  So we’re not new to the gentle giants.  But I kind of felt like I should apologize to the old guy for making him walk in circles for our enjoyment.  But we did “ride an elephant in Malaysia”  so CHECK on that box.

Speaking of boxes, tomorrow we pick up our first round (and hopefully ‘only’ round) of boxes to begin sending our stuff back to the US.  I don’t know if we’re sad or excited or anxious or just want to get the damn thing over with.  At any rate, it’s going to start tomorrow and be done in a few days.  In the meantime, Jake has met a few new friends and been enjoying the beach close by.  It’s cool being a cruising kid… a few kids come by in a dinghy, they say hi, you jump in, you tell your parents “we’ll be on channel 8” and off you go.  Andy and I actually circled the anchorage tonight wondering which boat he actually went to.  I think they’re now calling this “free range parenting” at home.   You don’t know how long I’ve been trying to fit that into a blog. 

I hope you all enjoy the pics.  We did.  More to come soon…packing out, shipping out, flying out and heading to the marina for the final listing.  Stay tuned.

Some pics of Jake for the grandparents and some updated pics of Savannah with her new lipstick on.

New Trampoline, wood, and fresh deck paint.

More new paint.

and more paint...

Shiny new transmission, the reason for all the woe.

New upholstery.

Big News...and a little bit of nostalgia

Savannah at anchor in one of our favorite places
in Palau

When we sold our house, all of our stuff and bought Savannah, it was the hardest, scariest and most exciting thing we’ve ever done.  After 10 years of planning and saving, w were finally realizing our goal of a five-year cruise around the world.  Looking back, I guess we were kind of naïve on the timeline…after all, it is a great big world.  Anyway, I agreed to six months in Mexico to see if I could, indeed live on a tiny boat with my husband and son 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  Six months turned into a year and soon enough we found ourselves crossing the big scary ocean to tropical islands far away.  At some point, Savannah became home and our little life of traveling from place to place via the ocean became normal.  When asked how long we would sail, we quit quoting our five-year plan and instead said “when one of us isn’t having fun or we run out of money.”

The morning we left San Diego.

3 days later, our approach to Isla Guadalupe

Fast forward five years and we find ourselves only half way around the world.  We’ve traveled to 16 different countries visiting some of the most remote places in existence and crossed the largest ocean in the world.    We have seen and done some amazing things.  While it’s not always an easy life, for the most part, we’re still happy and having fun.  However, after many long hours of discussion and doing some math, the sad fact is that we have finally run out of money.  It’s something we knew would happen one day, we just hoped it would be later and we’d be closer to home.  We could probably get to South Africa, but then we’d be stuck without many appealing options.   We’ve both stopped and worked before and while we could do that again, we don’t want to be separated again for so long (or in Andy’s case, get shot at).  In reality, with the travel involved and living expenses, we really don’t ever save as much as planned and it ends up just being a long time apart. 

Our first bonfire in Mexico

Pirates in La Cruz, Mexico

Crossing the equator for the first time

Island kids (and Jake) in the Tuamotos

Jake, participating in the French Polynesian games
at a school in the Tuamotos

In our effort to pretend to be responsible adults and avoid that ever growing population of people receiving gov’t assistance (Andy says we have a taste for fine cheddar, not gov’t cheese! Which may be part of the problem…), we have come to the very hard and sad reality that we need to put Savannah on the market here in Malaysia and go back to the United States to take a break.  We’ll get jobs and settle down somewhere on the south east coast while we save up for our next adventure. 

It’s been a hard couple of months.  Jake “refused to allow it” when we first told him and there have been tears all around.  But just like in the beginning, this is the hardest, scariest and most exciting thing we’ve done.  They say the two happiest days of your life (aside from marriage and children, of course) is the day you buy your boat and the day you sell it.  We’re trying to focus on the good things about selling, like being back with family, dishwashers, washing machines, The Big Green Egg, and Chick-fil-a!

I believe this was in the Mortlocks in Micronesia

Christmas celebration in Lamotrek, Micronesia with the locals.

Our first anchorage after arriving in the Philippines

I’m sure this won’t be my last post on the subject, but I’m going to try and not dwell on it all too much.  There’s no point.  In the meantime, we’re on the hard here in Thailand getting her all fixed up (being reminded of what BOAT stands for….Break Out Another Thousand) In between working on Savannah, we’ll try to squeeze in a little more fun before we actually list her.  It’ll be a few weeks before it all happens so don’t abandon us just yet…I promise lots of honest, if not exciting posts on the trials and tribulations of wrapping things up.

Feeding giraffes in the Philippines

Amazing vacation in Australia

Sailing to Thailand

Boys, boys, boys

The last few weeks have had their ups and downs on Savannah, but today I’m going to focus on the ups…  I cannot explain how happy it makes me to see Jake playing with these two wonderful kids on Love Song.   Despite it being a threesome, something that rarely worked in my circle of friends growing up, they get along great and never tire of each other.  It’s also fun to hear Jake talk to Morgan about dinosaurs.  Jake thought he was the authority on all things prehistoric and well…now he’s learning a few things. 

Andy and I took them to the War Museum in Penang and stopped by a “Snake Temple” on our way back to the marina.  Both were fun, but strange in their own way.  First, the museum was also dubbed a paintball park.  And it had a ton of what we thought were leftover decorations from Halloween….still not sure if some of them are decorations or part of the recreated scenes.  The area was a fort built by the English way back when (don’t you love my historic details?) and long ago deserted.  It sat for 60 years being looted and growing over.  A private party bought the land and decided to restore the old bunkers, walls and tunnels as much as possible.  They did a pretty good job with that, but it’s a little weird walking around old tunnels and fort walls and then seeing a miniature model of a tank.  The boys enjoyed running around shooting each other and climbing out escape hatches….something that would NEVER be allowed at home for fear of a law suit (crawl through a dark tunnel, then climb straight up an old metal rung 9 meter ladder to the outside).  From a museum perspective, it was just ok, but it was perfect for a few boys to let off some energy.

This was the exit for the escape hatch.

There is a danger sign here that says don't enter, but it didn't say anything
about exiting.  The lady at the front desk was the one to tell us to do it.

As for the “Snake Temple.”  The deceiving thing here was the word temple.  It’s a temple all right, but it’s way more touristy than religious.  We lectured the boys about showing respect and keeping their voices down, etc. and then we walked in to find about 20 people snapping photos and waiting in line to pay their RM30 (about $10 USD) to hold a python.  There were snakes all over the place, but some of them were so lethargic (full?) that the boys weren’t really convinced they were real.

Note the snakes on the branches where the kids are looking.

Not sure exactly what this face is supposed to be.

Now we’re here in Langkawi, on the hook in Telaga Harbor.  This is a huge cruiser hangout simply because of the duty free status and the proximity to Thailand.  Andy and I aren’t quite sure what the draw is yet, but it’s growing on us.  The highlight is still watching the boys play all day, only now they have a whole beach to run around on.  It looks like it will be Jake’s first Christmas in years with more than just mom and dad and some other old people.  We’re all excited.

I managed to get my paddle board out again and even found
someone to paddle me around!

Sunset in Kuah, Langkawi