"Oh, my Limoges!"

 In "Out of Africa", Karen Bliksen cried out when her crate of delicate fine china fell and smashed to bits on the road to her new life as a coffee planter in Kenya. However, it was the last time that china counted for much in the landscape of her life....

Randy and I are going totally bonkers with stressful multitasking at the moment. I am still employed, with only 18 days to go! Randy's working five days a week on several major jobs on Sinbad.  We are within 2-3 weeks of  completing liquidating our households: both of us are renting and selling our homes, giving away truckloads of clothing and furnishings, getting rid of our cars, and making all sorts of arrangements to manage our financial affairs via the internet.  This is a fairly clinical description.  It is really more of a massive farewell to our lives as we've known them until now.  We are saying farewell to friends and family, some of whom may come to visit us in faraway places, others who surely will not. We are passing along all the things we've collected over a lifetime; keepsakes and souvenirs, pictures of our school days and those of our children and parents, favorite dresses and fancy shoes, Randy's guns and bow and deer hunting gear, our skis. Realizing that we won't be skiing again, or sitting quietly in the woods with the snow falling,waiting for deer to silently appear, or contentedly planting in the garden. Both of us have had pangs of regret for these things passing  from our lives.  But we've decided to trade "things" for "experiences".  We are working with determination to  finish our refit, to modernize Sinbad into the well founded cruising vessel and comfortable home from which we will see the world.  We think of ocean passages, with days following nights of disciplined watchkeeping, watching the Milky Way float through the velvet night sky for hours until dawn fades it to pale lilac. The solitude broken suddenly by the gasping breath and the shining eye of a dolphin swimming just below my elbow.  The first sighting of a Bermuda Longtail, harbinger of landfall. The carnival feeling of arriving in a foreign port, with the smells of hot earth and spicy greenery fresh in our nostrils. The cheerful camaraderie of other sailors, (especially other Whitby folk!).

Soon enough we will be older and living again on land. But for now, "we do it for the stories we can tell" !

Cheers, Di