The More Things Change . . . plans, that is

(A note: as this is published, we’re offshore sailing from the Caribbean to the Chesapeake. You can follow our progress on our tracker.)

I remember thinking (and maybe even saying out loud) last fall when we sailed under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge that this was the last time we’d be in that particular location with Calypso. We’d said that once before, when Jeremy brought the boat down to Annapolis during the sailboat show. Then, though backtracking to Pasadena and Oak Harbor Marina felt like a step back, it made a ton of sense especially in light of what we still had to accomplish to be ready to leave. During the 3 weeks we were back in Oak Harbor, we patted ourselves on the back almost every day for making what felt like a hard call - having both boats and the car in one location made life SO. MUCH. EASIER. Since then, we’ve sailed all the way to south of 15 degrees north and feel pretty proud of our progress.

*Bye bye Chesapeake Bay Bridge! (er, not so fast, apparently)*

And here we are, sitting in the British Virgin Islands, prepping the boat for an offshore sail back to - you guessed it - Pasadena and Oak Harbor Marina. Does it feel a bit like a backtrack? In some ways, yes. When our ultimate goal involves going through the Panama Canal, a 1600 mile voyage in completely the opposite direction seems like a crazy choice.

Why are we doing this?

Sometimes you make a decision and then start really thinking about all the ramifications. We’d gone so far as to book a haul out date and storage in Trinidad and had begun researching flights from Port of Spain. Then we started talking.

It’s kind of the trifecta of understanding. There’s the cost angle. The calendar angle. (The wild card piece.) And the convenience angle. Let’s take a look.

The cost. In talking to friends and fellow cruisers who have had boats all over the country, it seems that we’ve been unbelievably fortunate in the costs we’ve encountered for dry land storage of our 28’ (41’ overall) boat in the Chesapeake Bay. Our benchmark of $150 a month for storage is what we have in mind as we talk about sticker shock here; hauling, blocking, and launching are outside of that number.

We talked to yards in Trinidad, Grenada, Antigua, and Panama. All were roughly within a few dollars a month for storage; all would run over $600 a month. In most cases, there was a stand rental charge on top of that number to take into account. So to our way of thinking, it’s roughly four times as expensive to store the boat in the Caribbean as back in the US - though my friends assure me this is not the case, that Caribbean prices are on par with most of the rest of the US. Holy moly.

Hauling the boat in Trinidad for 6 months (taking us through the height of hurricane season) was going to run us close to $4000, plus the cost of airfare.

*Pulling the boat out is always nerve-wracking*

The calendar. We have 2 kids graduating from college in the US in the next 2 years, the first just a few weeks away. The second is in late April of 2024, making a Pacific crossing not really in the cards until the 2024-2025 season. For various reasons, we’re not much interested in cruising either the Western Caribbean nor the Sea of Cortez, so there’s a bit of time that needs to be filled during hurricane season/lightning season in Panama 2024 as well.

The wild card. The second boat we bought on a whim in 2021 is sitting patiently on the hard in Maryland. She needs a fair amount of work to be brought to a cruise-ready state. We’d planned to farm a little of that work out to the yard while somehow finding the time to put in some hard labor ourselves; our initial thought was we’d spend a couple of weeks this summer working on her and figure out what could be hired out and what was on our plate. The costs of storage in the Caribbean brought Mischief firmly back into our minds. When we bought her, we promised the sellers we’d take her cruising. We mean to fulfill that promise.

*She looks a little better than this now, but not a lot.*

Which leads us to . . . The convenience. While we’ll admit there’s not a lot that’s convenient about a 2 week passage back to the States, giving up very hard earned easting that will have to be fought for again, the biggest factor in the convenience part of the conversation is the fact that we have a second BCC that’s patiently waiting a very thorough overhaul. We realized that taking Calypso back to Pasadena would enable us to love on Mischief while living on a conveniently-located Calypso. Last summer we lived with friends on Maryland’s Eastern Shore while working on Calypso, adding a 2+ hour car commute (all that gas added up too) 6 days a week and stressing a valuable friendship. This summer, our commute time will be measured in minutes instead of hours - and we won’t be putting our friendship at risk by overstaying a generously-offered welcome for a second year in a row.

*Will they be neighbors again this summer?*

We’ve sorted out a (loose) grand vision of getting Mischief cruise-capable this summer and fall, with the Bahamas as the goal. Close enough to get over and back by early April, the Bahamas has the added benefit of being a perfect cruising ground (in our opinion) to test a new-to-us boat. We’ve got our work cut out for us, of course. Between the rig, the engine, the electrical, and the water damage there’s a lot to do. Having a time crunch in terms of weather (we’re not fans of cold weather) means we’re focused on doing what’s necessary. This is not going to be a gold-plated refit.

*Will we have a photo of Mischief like this? Time will tell!*

As to what happens in 2024 after that road trip to graduation, I could make a lot of lofty statements about where we’ll be or what we’ll be doing. But what’s likely true is that it’ll involve boats and sailing, and probably a few changed plans. Do we go to Maine or Canada via Bermuda on Calypso? Sell Mischief? Spend the summer with family in Vermont and then take Calypso back to the Eastern Caribbean before going through the canal and onto points west? Sail directly to Colombia in the fall and bypass another Eastern Caribbean season?

So many options. Lucky us.