Big Changes, Big Love: Moxie Chooses Another Course
5/28/2018Viv in her favorite spot on Moxie. Outside a colorful house in Guadeloupe. Living on a boat, sometimes you run out of things to...
5/28/2018
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| Viv in her favorite spot on Moxie. |
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| Outside a colorful house in Guadeloupe. |
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| Living on a boat, sometimes you run out of things to do. But if you really get desperate, you can always decorate your Dad's head with every hair accessory you own. |
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| The homemade hand-cranked ice cream on Guadeloupe was a major high point for this crew. |
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| Ti Punch is a specialty of the French Islands. It consists of rum in a little glass with sugar on the side and wedges of fresh lime. Wicked strong and super tasty! |
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| The Botanical Gardens in Deshaies, Guadeloupe had so many hungry koi we were afraid they might jump up on the dock and attack! |
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| These were the most gorgeous birds I had ever seen, and they were not shy. |
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| There is an epidemic of Sargasso sea grass over-growth in the Caribbean right now, and it's ruining lots of beautiful beaches on some of the islands. Trav & Hud were fishing on one of our sails recently and were CERTAIN they had hooked a gigantic fish. They spent over 40 minutes reeling it in, all the time speculating about whether they'd landed a 6 ft. Tuna or a 7 ft. Marlin...but turned out to be something not nearly as tasty. |
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| Playing in a gorgeous river on Guadeloupe. It's always extra special when you find a swing! |
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| We hiked through ankle-deep mud (in flip flops) for over 2 hours to reach this waterfall in Guadeloupe. I'm still trying to get the dirt out from under my toenails. |
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| A hilariously cheesy rum tour in Guadeloupe that also included an insect museum and model ship display. The rums we sampled were on the sweet side, not so much to Trav's liking. (The guy in the back also looks displeased.) |
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| One of the VERY BEST experiences of our entire trip: the History of Slavery museum in Guadeloupe. It is an absolute modern masterpiece that is difficult to describe. We are still processing all that we learned and experienced there. |
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| Les Saintes are a group of tiny French islands off of Guadeloupe. We fell in love with them. This lovely church is an example of their historic charm. |
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| A gorgeous hilltop view of our anchorage in Les Saintes. |
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| We try to leave Moxie stickers wherever we go, and it was fun to give one to Roy, the bartender at the Indian River Bush Bar on Dominica. Roy makes all of his own rum mixers by hand and they are DELICIOUS. |
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| We visited a chocolate factory in Dominica and our minds were blown-- do you know how many steps are involved in making chocolate? There are A LOT. First they pick the cacao beans, then ferment them, then dry them, then roast them, then grind them, then separate the parts....and that's as far as we can remember. We bought many yummy flavors of chocolate including lemongrass, spice, and mint. |
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| Viv clowns around with a headless, armless statue on Martinique. |
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| The Saturday market in St. Pierre, Martinique was loads of fun. We bought this giant hunk of fresh tuna and feasted like kings. |
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| Jams, jellies, and spices in brilliant hues at the market in Martinique. |
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The ruins of a beautiful theatre that was destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Pelee on Martinique in 1902. The volcano had given plenty of warning signs, but people's limited understanding in those days of how volcanoes erupt gave the citizens of St. Pierre a very false sense of security. When the eruption eventually happened, over 29,000 people were killed in a matter of minutes.
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| Mussels in cream sauce on the French island of Martinique were so tasty they demanded a repeat. (Which we rarely do). |
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| St Lucia! Piton beer with one of the Piton peaks in the background. |
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| Pictured with Hud and Viv are Dezlie and Zime, our guides to the volcanic mud baths of Soufriere, St. Lucia. We had actually hired Zime's older brother to take us but he sent us with 11 year old Zime instead! Along the way we were joined by Zime's 2 young cousins. It was an hour walk up a steep road to get there and we had a blast the whole way. Mango trees were spilling their treasures and the kids picked them up by the roadside and feasted as we walked. |
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| The active volcano bubbles and spits mud on St. Lucia. |
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| Our gang of "guides" at the mud baths-- we had the best day with these sweet little boys. |
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| The mud at these springs felt amazing on our skin and soaking it off in the thermal pools afterwards was dreamy. This is the closest thing I've gotten to a spa treatment in many years. |
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We were so excited to hike to this waterfall in St. Lucia because it was 8,000 degrees that day and we wanted to cool off. Little did we know that this particular waterfall is fed by a HOT SPRING. Not the refreshment we were looking for but fun nonetheless.    |
“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.
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
