Vacation or Lifestyle?

We’ve been at this for 10 days now, and I’m wondering at what point it will start to feel like a lifestyle rather than a vacation. Our primary reason for choosing to do this was to explore other countries and cultures, which is what many of my favorite (adult life) vacations have been about anyway, so it doesn’t really feel any different yet.

During our month-long shakedown cruise last July, we dealt with procuring groceries while aboard, keeping the boat clean, and doing laundry. I even did some consulting work last summer and I will be publishing a monthly newsletter for our boating club throughout this year and into 2020, and Dave still participates in conference calls for the STEM Guitar program. We’ve certainly had to do repairs (it is a boat, after all). We research and plan routes to our destinations, decide if we’ll anchor, moor or dock (and keep check on our finances). It is always an adventure, which is what we wanted, even though we’re still in the USA. Maybe this is what the lifestyle will always feel like, just with varying challenges based on location. I suppose we’ll see.

At any rate, we have been exploring. We have through August to get to Chesapeake, VA, so we are not lacking in exploration time!

Since my last post we have spent time in Scituate harbor and had two friends aboard, one for an overnight. We got boarded by the Coast Guard just as we were coming up on the Sandwich Harbor in the canal. It was a routine safety check. We were pretty much the only boat out there, and it looked like they were doing some training. We passed with only a warning about our horn which apparently decided to stop working sometime this past week. So now we have another thing to fix, but did purchase an air horn in Sandwich as a backup; so we’re legal now. We spent and afternoon at the Heritage Museum in Sandwich and one night at the dock in the harbor. We had a half tranquil and half adventurous ride to Oak Bluffs harbor at Martha’s Vineyard. We saw only two patrol boats in the canal, no commercial or recreational traffic there at all. All was smooth until Woods Hole where the current was screaming against us. It appeared to be about 5 kts as we were making only 2 kts headway under full power. After Woods Hole, the predicted 2-foot seas were choppy, built to 4-5 feet and we had a 2 kt current against us. The payoff? It’s off season here, so we’re not being charged for the town mooring we are on for 4 nights. Score! We’ve dubbed around Oak Bluffs, Edgartown and Vineyard Haven doing the tourist thing. Tomorrow looks like we’ll be stuck aboard in the rain, but we’re about due for down time anyway, with a day of movies. A very friendly nearby hotel is even letting us boost their WiFi, so we watched game 4 of the Bruins vs. Blue Jackets on Thursday and are abot to watch game 5 tonight.

But now it’s time for dinner- homemade pizza!

Author: Indigo Lady

I am a retired educator married to a retired chemist/engineer/educator. We will be living aboard our solar electric catamaran for as long as possible. View all posts by Indigo Lady