Sometimes life throws things at you and you fall down and get up and try again.  Sometimes, people just give up and quit.

JoAnne and I have been at this marina a whole year.  We’ve made wonderful friends, traveled by car everywhere, and we’ve sailed out in the Atlantic a few times now.

Last December I was ready to quit and sell the boat, and move back to Colorado.  Then my brother got very ill, so we kept the boat on the transient docks here and went north to Michigan where he was in critical condition in ICU.  We waited around about 10 days until we knew he was getting better.  Then we came back.

We’d had major engine issues, gotten our asses kicked, sea sick, had to deal with travel and a sick relative.  We were exhausted, tired, and really not ready to continue.  So we stayed here.

In October this year we thought we’d get out.  Then the “Great Fire Extinguisher” recall started.  Technically, it started before that but we didn’t hear about it, except as a fluke through someone else’s blog entry.  So, I made my calls as soon as I knew (which was early November).  A month later, we’re still awaiting at least one of them.

Over the past two months we’ve had three aborted attempts at heading out.

Once because of weather.  The second time due to fog and light winds.  Today, 7′ plus waves and small craft advisories (and listing to the commercial traffic in the shipping lanes, I’m glad we aborted this morning).  Big rolling waves coming in.

JoAnne, who can and does get sea sick in the wrong conditions (short period waves)  said “Nope”.  So, that was a nope.

Nope means Nope.  So, for all my friends giving me crap for “Still being here”… understand that I’m not a cruiser so I can put myself through hell every few weeks.  I’m a cruiser because I live on a boat, I DO move the boat (however occasionally that might be of late) and we are going to continue cruising.

It wasn’t in the cards.  Winds are right, the waves are too big for us in close right now.  Once we get back out there, it will be fine, but until she is 100% ready and I don’t have to worry about her being sea sick, then we’ll go.

We have a couple of requirements.  The first one is we want to SAIL, not MOTOR all the way to Florida. So the winds have to be mostly right, and the weather has to be conducive to get us out of Cape Fear.  They don’t call it “Cape Fear” for nothing.  Listening to some of the ships talking about 7 foot rollers was enough for me.

ICW is too shallow, I hate it.  At some point we’ll get out and go south, but today is not that day.

There’s always tomorrow.  Or Karaoke.