Yesterday we had our breakdown. We both cried at this miserable turn of events and about how we seemed to be thwarted at every step of the way in the twenty years it took to realize our dream. We cried because we worked so hard to get to this point only to be turned back at the most exciting moment. We cried because we had poured so much love into Escape Velocity and she was in such fine condition. We cried because we don’t know if we have the fortitude to go on.
And then we got a text message from our friends on Macushla who’ve been researching boatyard options for us. They had some suggestions and their usual words of support and we burst into tears again, tears of gratitude that we have such caring friends and family. We have a keychain that Mark and Sue brought us from England with the classic British admonition to “keep calm and carry on.”
And that’s what we will do.
As the day wore on and we read and napped in the cockpit we started entertaining possibilities. We know that the repairs will take a long time and that we’ll be parked probably in Panama for the duration. Perhaps we could visit Machu Pichu, something we couldn’t work into our cruising schedule this year. We could learn to scuba dive, which we meant to do way back in Pittsburgh and never got around to. If the repairs are done in time we could cruise up to Mexico and depart for the South Pacific from there at the start of next season. If we did that we could stop in Costa Rica and meet another branch of my family who migrated there from St. Thomas. We could make a trip back to the states and apply for a long-stay visa for French Polynesia and not be limited to the 90 days we Americans are granted on entry.
We will make lemonade. And we will drink a full glass.