Life on the water requires flexibility and adaptability. The biggest concern is always the weather. The weather dictates just about everything. And then there are the generic plans of life.

We can be anywhere at any time if we leave early enough and leave enough time to adapt to the weather. It is after all how we were able to get Liam to Portland on time for his HS Graduation. We arrived two weeks early in the harbor. And even then we were changing plans due to weather.

Following Liam’s graduation though we’ve been challenged schedule and plan wise with another issue. Ryan’s job hunt. First was the need to be around for him to go on job interviews, then there were the array of Zoom based video interviews. And eventually his offer to work in Hawaii on a cruise ship. Now we’re dealing with the endless delays and timeline of a cruise line, the USCG, and all of the other aspects. The cruise line of course is used to folks staying in one location more than we do.

So we were able to get Ryan his TWIC appointment rather quickly, but now we’re trying to coordinate his medical exam and of course since it’s being coordinated and paid for by the company which means we don’t have a lot of choices.

Seems that his medical exam was scheduled for August 30th in South Portland. We were planning on being an overnight sail away, and then we will need to move to Boston rather quickly after that. So what’s the plan?

Do we skip Provincetown this summer? Do we sail down and then sail back up only to sail back down again? That’s super tempting and if I could guarantee good weather I’d want to do that. No right now we’re thinking, assuming we have a pTown mooring by then that we’ll head up to the pTown Enterprise Rent a Car office (3 miles from the dinghy dock) and rent a car to do the 6 hour drive back to Portland Maine for Ryan’s 15 minute medical exam then drive the 6 hours back to pTown. After all it’s much easier to drive in bad weather than it is to sail in bad weather.

Then Ryan will need to go for his STCW week of safety training. I do remember that the cruise line mentioned their STCW training happens in Maryland so I’ve been toying with the idea of trying to get to Annapolis early and renting a mooring for the entire month of October. Thinking how cool it would be to have a good mooring for the Annapolis Sailboat Show and then fingers crossed that his training is that month.

But in the end… who knows? That’s the point. The weather will change. Life will come up. And things outside of our control will dictate what happens much more than we will get to make choices.

Jewell Island, that’s as far as our plan goes so far.