“The world is a big place.”

That’s what Trav said the other day after we had been soul searching and debating and pro-ing and con-ing for several hours, trying to figure out what our next big Moxie move will be.  The hurricane season is almost upon us, and we are nearing the end of the Caribbean island chain.  Since last December we’ve sailed through the Dominican Republic’s north coast, Puerto Rico’s south coast, the Spanish Virgin Islands, St. Thomas, St. John, the BVIs, St. Maarten, St. Barth’s, Saba, St. Eustatia, St. Kitts, Nevis, Montserrat, Antigua, Guadeloupe, Les Saintes, Dominica, Martinique, and St. Lucia, the Grenadines.  In a week or so, we'll head to our final Caribbean destination, Grenada.

We’ve gone round and round and round about what to do next.  Sell the boat and return to Telluride in August?  Spend the hurricane season in Grenada and sail one more year in the Caribbean, maybe west to the ABCs and then over to Cartegena? Or maybe leave the boat and spend the hurricane season skiing in Argentina, then touring around South America in a van?  These are options we’ve been simmering on for the past few months, and there is something that tempts us in each of these possibilities. 

But as we’ve been known to do, usually without much warning, we’ve pulled the plug on all of these aforementioned plans and come up with something totally different.  As of two days ago, we have decided that we want to live on Moxie in New England for the summer.  Almost all of our family members live in Maine, and many of our nearest and dearest friends are scattered along the East Coast.  We always spend a big chunk of the summer with our family, but this time we’d like to stay a bit longer, sail the amazing New England coast and share Moxie with people we’ve know forever and love with all our hearts.  We have friends we want to visit in Rhode Island and Nantucket (Mills and Potters, we’re coming for ya!) and there are a million islands we want to explore between those places and Maine.  Most of all, we want to share Moxie with our Moms and Dads.  Our boat is a magical one, and we want our folks to know her.

SO, how are we going to make this happen?  Grenada is approximately 1900 nautical miles from Maine.  This is a big sail.  We deliberated a lot about whether or not our crew was up for a sail of this magnitude, and we have mixed feelings about it.  Many families (with kids much younger than ours!) cross oceans together and are at sea in open water for weeks on end.  We admire these families, and I wish that we could say that our entire crew is up to this kind of challenge. At this time, we do not feel that we are quite there.  Could we do it? Probably, yes.  Would we be happy doing it? We aren’t sure.  Does Trav want to do it? Yes.

Trav is hiring a crew to sail Moxie with him from Grenada to Rhode Island.  The kids and I will fly from Grenada to Maine, then drive down to RI and sail up to Maine with him from there.  I’d be lying to you if I told you I am 100% pleased with this plan.  I know that every single minute Trav is at sea without us I am going to be stressed and worried.  Our family sticks together.  That’s what we do.  But we had to come to a difficult point of acceptance: sailing from Grenada to Rhode Island is something that Travis WANTS TO DO. He is a great sailor and he knows Moxie better than anyone.  He loves to sail, and he is ready for this kind of challenge.  He deserves to have the chance.  We cannot hold him back, it wouldn’t be right or fair.

For the first leg of the journey, Trav and his crew will sail from Grenada to Bermuda.  It will take between 3-6 days, depending on wind and weather.  They will rest and then, weather depending, they will sail the rest of this trip which will take 4-5 days.  Trav says he is looking forward to the trip, but he’s worried about seasickness.  He does get sick.  We will stock him well with Stugeron and Dramamine, and fingers crossed that the seas cooperate.

At thus point, I just want to focus on Trav sailing safely to meet us.  That’s all I care about.  We have so many cool things to see in the next week, everyone says the Grenadines are what all the fuss is about.  I will try to be present as we experience those islands, but I know myself…I’m going to be thinking about what’s ahead.

We are in Bequia in the Grenadines right now and it's one of our very favorite places that we've visited so far.  We are already missing the Caribbean-- how can we be leaving this incredible place?  OK, HERE'S HOW...
A huge part of our family mission is to keep learning, growing, and challenging ourselves.  As much as we love sailing in gorgeous tropical places, we feel like it's time to push the envelope.  So our plan now (after sailing the summer in New England), is to fly to Europe and live somewhere in the mountains..someplace with skiing...somewhere cheap-ish (does this exist in Europe??)  We realize this is a huge turn-around from the way we've been living. But skiing is a huge part of our family culture.  We want to ski, and we want to live in another country for an extended period of time (when we lived in the DR for 6 months, it felt so right.  We had a community there, it was very special.) This kind of major change in lifestyle and location will require a lot of planning and figuring out, and it's all a bit daunting at the moment....but hey, we've done it once, we can do it again, right?  If you've already pulled up stakes and turned everything you know upside down, how hard can it be to do it again?  Obstacles are only as big as you make them.

That's all the information we have right now, we'll share more of our planning and decision-making as it unfolds.     

Until next time-- Hooray for big dreams, big plans, big risks, big LOVE xoxox