July 15, 2006 South
Portland, Maine, USA
Re-entry: Trying to assimilate back into American life
I have been putting off making this final trip
update. I apologize. I think there are a whole host of reasons why it's
been difficult to sit down and write this. For one thing, it just seems
so final. The end of the trip. We're back in our house, no longer
living on Zora, and that's sad. Also, I didn't want to write this
final Trip entry while I was in a blue mood -didn't want it to be all
sad and depressing- but that's the way I've been feeling since we got
back. I'm feeling a little better now -we've been back for 7 weeks- so
I'll try to write this as honestly as I can.
Well, let me tell you about the last leg of the
trip, first! We left Norfolk between two cold fronts. We'd planned to
stay a day or two, but with the crazy weather pattern of fronts spinning
off the coast every few days, we felt we should take any reasonable
window that presented itself. So we left Great Bridge and stopped for
fuel in Norfolk, then spent one squally night and left the next morning.
We had a fast sail north, and had hoped to make it all the way to
Buzzards Bay, or at least Block Island. But NOAA was forecasting another
one of those violent cold fronts with "deadly cloud-to-ground
lightening" and 50-knot gusts so we stuck close to the New Jersey coast
and headed for New York Harbor. In the early morning hours, as we
approached the shipping lane convergence, Neil tuned the VHF to monitor
both 16 and 13, so he could listen to the commercial traffic. When I
came on watch at 0500, I was glad he'd done that, since it allowed me to
hear which of the 25 or so monstrous tankers anchored in the harbor was
about to up-anchor and start moving around. It gave me enough time to
get out of their way. Another sailboat came in from offshore about an
hour after we did, and by then about half the ships were underway: the
sailboat was caught in the middle of them, dodging these big ships and
fighting the strong current as well.
Here are some pictures of our pre-dawn approach
under the Verrazzano Bridge:

We had a couple of hours to kill before the tide
turned in the East River (we didn't want to fight the 5 knot current at
Hell's Gate!) so we anchored beneath the Statue of Liberty and rested a
while. Then we continued up the East River and out into Long Island
Sound, bundled up against what seemed like bitter cold (it was probably
about 50 degrees) and watching the sky as the cold front steadily
advanced. We wanted to get as far as we could before the thunderstorms
and squalls hit. By early afternoon the first fat raindrops were
falling, and we followed a stream of sailboats into Huntington Bay. We'd
been told by a friend who was a member of the yacht club there that we
could use a mooring, but when we radioed the dockmaster he told us,
basically, to get lost. "NO. We do NOT have any guest moorings that
members are allowed to let people use. We are full up!" and a while
later when we called back to be sure it was the right yacht club, "We
can certainly accommodate you, but you'll have to pay." Geez, thanks for
the hospitality. By now the visibility was down to barely a boat length
in the rain. We went in anyway, hoping we'd find a spot to anchor, but
Huntington Harbor was packed with moorings. We poked into Lloyd Harbor
instead, and circled around trying to find a deep enough spot to anchor
(it was strange to have to be considering significant tidal ranges
again!) between the vacant moorings. The one other sailboat on the
harbor called out to us and said we could pick up his mooring, he was
leaving. It was a relief to have someone being friendly to us, and we
were happy to use his mooring. We were all pretty bleary-eyed and
exhausted after the sail up from Virginia. Anchoring in one of the more
exposed harbors, for 50-knot winds, just didn't sound too fun.


The next day we plowed northward and arrived at
Marion the following morning. We had a reunion with our friends Frank
and Lynda on Simba, and spent some time on the library internet
and phones trying to get utilities set up for our house in Maine. It was
beginning to dawn on me what a colossal project it was going to be to
re-enter land life.
Two days later, after an easy overnight through
the Cape Cod Canal and up the coast, Zora entered her home waters
again.
I had fully expected that when Portland Head Light
-the prominent lighthouse at the edge of Casco Bay- came in sight, I'd
be hit with the same excitement and nostalgia I felt when when returning
home after the long cruise to the Mediterranean I'd taken with my family
years ago. But when we passed Portland Head Light, even though Olivia
was giddy with excitement, I felt mostly resignation and quiet sadness.
It took me a little by surprise: I really thought that once we got back
I'd be more excited to be here..... (notice the folded-back bimini: it
was so cold that we were trying to get every speck of warmth from the
sun that we could. Quite a change from the last couple of years!)

After spending the night at Diamond Cove and a
nice welcome-home dinner with my family, we started the enormous task of
moving back to land life. Neil wanted to get us moved back into the
house right away, so that he could devote his time and energy to his job
hunt. So the next morning we borrowed cars and took the first load of
stuff off Zora and over to our house in South Portland. We'd
spent a lot of time and energy renovating the house, so I was surprised
to feel so little upon returning. Even getting all of our treasures out
of storage didn't excite me. It just seemed like a lot of stuff.
So much stuff! And the house (modest at 2400 sf) seemed so huge!
Weird, weird, weird.....
At first the house seemed to be in pretty good
condition, considering it had been rented out for 2 1/2 years. But then
we saw damage: the floors, newly refinished before we left, needed to be
redone in several rooms; the gardens were a mess; we needed to repaint;
and the worst was when Liv flushed the upstairs toilet and it rained in
the kitchen! Neil spent the weekend ripping up the bathroom floor and
re-plumbing, and buying and installing a new toilet in the downstairs
bathroom. I went through endless lists of everything we needed to do to
live this life again. Unless you've been away for a long time, you can't
imagine how much is entailed in re-entering American life. Insurances
need to be researched and changed, doctors called and appointments made,
telephone (what kind? regular, cellular, digital?), water, electricity,
heating oil, city tax office, banks, internet service, cable.....so much
STUFF is involved!!! We actually decided not to have TV at all. We were
looking at the plans and complaining that the "basic" service, with only
13 channels (we really only need PBS for Liv) was actually going to cost
MORE than the cable company's 250-channel package. But we didn't want
250 channels! So Liv said, "Let's just not have TV!" What a cool kid. So
we have our TV for movie-watching only. I think, given our overall
reaction to the rest of American culture so far, that it's a really good
thing we don't have TV. It would just be too much...
Neil wanted to start working in
boatbuilding/refitting. So he talked to all of the local boatyards and
was thrilled that everyone wanted to hire him. He got five excellent job
offers, and it was incredibly difficult to decide which job to take.
He's been at Maine Yacht Center for 5 weeks now and it's going really
well. We're mostly moved back into the house. We're eating fresh
vegetables from the garden. Olivia got to do her promised
bedroom makeover, and is having fun
with her friends. I'm busy-busy-busy on several projects. We have had
some great family reunions, including meeting two babies who were born
while we were gone, Henry and Sally:

Zora has been emptied out. She looks so
bare without her cruising gear. The decks are clear now, gone are the
bimini, self-steering windvane, jerrycans, surfboard,
man-overboard-pole, two outboards, stern anchor. We took over a thousand
pounds of books and personal stuff off her. Now she's bobbing out of the
water, showing off nine inches of bottom paint. She looks weird. Weird,
weird, weird.
We were hoping to get a couple of charters this
summer, to offset the costs of keeping her for "the next trip", but have
no bookings so far. We did a whole bunch of work to her to get her
ready, though, so we'll have less to do this winter. Neil scraped all of
the varnish off the toerail and we're going to let it go grey. It's just
too difficult to keep varnish on it, since it's so often wet. But all
the rest of the varnish looks great now, and we're even varnishing the
cockpit table, which we never got around to before. This winter we'll
repaint the non-skid on the decks, build some dorade boxes, and maybe
even paint her hull dark blue.
I'm not sure if I can accurately describe how I'm
feeling about being back. There are so many different issues. Part of it
is simply American life. We're just not used to the frenetic pace, and
the outrageous consumerism everywhere. Go-Go-Go! Buy-Buy-Buy! Our friend
Dave on Macy just got back, too, and he told Neil the other day,
"I don't get it. I run around all day doing stuff, and at the end of the
day I'm exhausted but I think to myself, "What did I accomplish???""
That's exactly how I feel! I go around in a sort of daze: partly
feeling like it's all familiar, but also disconnected from it, not
really here, in a way. I mean, I'm there in Target buying bedsheets, or
whatever, but it feels sort of surreal. Hard to describe. But then when
I'm down working on Zora, I don't feel totally comfortable there,
either. It's not the same as when we were living on her, all together.
One day I was looking at the newspaper, and there
was a photo of a smiling Jamaican guy. He was working seasonal work in
Kennebunkport, already had one full-time job and was out pounding the
pavement for another, so he could take the money back to Jamaica and buy
a house. He was working harder than many Americans, but his smile was so
big and relaxed. On another page were photos of Americans "enjoying" a
"fun" jazz festival: none of them looked remotely as happy as the
Jamaican worker. Just seeing that smile made me "homesick" for the
Caribbean. And then I heard a report on the happiness of various
nationalities- it wasn't too surprising to learn that countries we'd
just visited (Columbia, Central America) had a much higher level of
general happiness and satisfaction with life than did America, despite
what most would consider much lower standards of living, harder work,
more poverty, etc.
And then I'm torn about where to focus my
energies. Should I embrace land life and make it the best it can be?
Sometimes I think so, and I make lists of things to do to make the house
a more comfortable home. Or should I concentrate my energies and
resources on getting back out there as soon as possible? In that case, I
should just leave the house half-unpacked and live with things as they
are, saving every single red cent for the next trip. And I miss my
family! Neil's gone all day at work, and soon Liv will be off at school.
Just a short time ago we were together all the time, every day. Weird.
Weird. Weird.
I wonder how long this will last.
I keep telling myself that it's absolutely
ridiculous that I should feel sad or depressed. Just think how lucky
I am! Just look at what a wonderful and fantastic thing we
did! And I try to remember that, and try to be grateful (and I really
am) for everything, my wonderful family and health and the darned nice
life we have here - even if it isn't a sea life. Luckily, I've spoken to
other returning sailors who feel, or felt, the same way. So at least I
know I'm not totally crazy!
And we're definitely hoping there will be a next
trip. That's the game plan right now: 3 years if we can possibly save
enough. Hopefully, an even longer trip next time. Some days, it's all
that keeps me going. |