Ending a relationship after 18 years is no inconsequential event. As we watched our 2004 Toyota Echo drive away with her new owners, every dent was a memory. The one with the yellow paint from the parking lot bollard. The huge one from our friend’s pickup truck in the Thrifty’s parking lot. Remember when we drove the kids home from the hospital to the boat? Remember all the ridiculous things we strapped the roof? The antenna fiasco? The snowplow incident? The impound debacle!?

Even though we had already quit our jobs, rented out our house, said goodbye to our friends, and pulled the kids out of school, with the car gone it really sunk in that there was no turning back. The Rubicon had been crossed!

Decades in the imagination and years in the planning, on May 11, 2022 we moved onto our sailboat Mandolyn for an indefinite period of travel as a family. Some experienced sailing friends had told us that in their entire circumnavigation, leaving the dock was the hardest part, with all the tumult involved in transitioning from one lifestyle to the next. We can’t yet say that it was the hardest, but it wasn’t easy! On May 12^th we left the dock.

The interesting thing about doing all that imagining is that once the time finally comes, expectation and reality have a few differences to reconcile. I mean, I didn’t seriously believe that the community would throw us a going away parade, with hundreds of friends and family throwing confetti from the dock, the marching band barely audible above the cheering as the first hints of a tropical breeze nudged our sails southward into a dazzling sunset. I didn’t believe it, but…

As it happened we left on a Thursday morning with our friends at school and work. 2 minutes out from the dock it started pouring rain HARD. Watching our home of the past 10 years drift away was surreal. Witness my giddy expression as the dream begins.

Here we go!