Optimism

Optimism...is writing down a plan for what you'll be doing for the next six years.

The other night Alisa and I sat down with Jimmy Cornell's World Cruising Routes and came up with the outline of an itinerary to get us back to Kodiak in six years.  The last time we sat down with World Cruising Routes and wrote out an itinerary like that was back when we were sitting in our house in Kodiak, wondering how we would get to Australia on Pelagic.

It's just an outline, of course, and subject to change.  In particular, we wrote down one or two ideas that we know are likely not possible, agreeing that we would figure out the details when or if they become an immediate problem.

Of course it tempts fate to plan out this far.  But that's really half the point - a sea adventure needs a pinch of the audacious about it, you have to be grasping at big things from the outset.  And I (and I think Alisa) have always operated best when the adventure is a bit goal-oriented.  I like to have a destination in mind, especially if getting there involves just a little struggle.

So this itinerary has us ending up in Kodiak, and starting off by leaving Tasmania this coming summer, bound for Lord Howe and the Auckland Islands.  Then a season in the western tropical Pacific.  And then...