Oh, that? Glad we did it.

I've profited from Alisa's New Year's resolutions in the past.  My favorite was the year she resolved to learn to make a really good pie crust.  But of course New Year's resolutions are so very 20th Century, and no one really bothers with them any more.  Even Alisa's fun, pie crust sort of resolutions have faded into the past.

So no new leaves are being turned over for either of us in 2012.  But we did take the opportunity of New Year's Eve to reflect on what we made of 2011, and what it made of us.  It was a year when we did a lot, and as we sat in the cockpit drinking cheap sparkling wine last night, talking about it all, I realized that there were few things we did last year that we ended up regretting.  We're glad that we bought this one particular imperfect boat and sailed the hell out of it.  We're glad that we set off across the Pacific only three and a half months after we bought the boat.  We're even glad that we left San Diego the day after the northeast Pacific hurricane season began - the risk was quite low,  and the alternative was twiddling our thumbs on the West Coast of North America for eight months or so.  And we're glad that we're out sailing the world now, even though all of our voyaging has been done while our little boys were completely the wrong age.  The alternative, of sitting in the office jobs back home and dreaming of something different, would be too grim.

It's a very old idea that it's the things you haven't done, the dreams you didn't bring to life, the risks not assayed through action, that you end up regretting.  I hate to write about it, for fear that I will jinx us and that we will end up regretting some action we take.  But so far that idea has held quite well for us - step out and prosecute life actively, and, whatever might happen, you won't look back wistfully at what might have been.

~~

Intrepid Miles Holmes about to ferry a boatload of kids through some whitewater on New Year's Eve.  Elias is second from left. 

The scene off Main Beach.  It's been blowing hard from the south ever since Boxing Day, so we've been waiting for a northerly change before we head down the New South Wales coast.  

I've been getting ever so slightly nostalgic about Iluka, as I come to realize that we don't know if we'll ever spend time here again.  This is the road out to Main Beach, which we've walked a hundred times.  Doesn't this just look like what a road to an Australian beach should look like?

Nah, we miss 'em

We just had family visiting us in Iluka - my parents for three weeks, and my sis and her fam for ten days.

On Boxing Day everyone was gone.  One of our Iluka friends said to Alisa, 'Whew, you must be relieved!'  But we didn't feel any sort of relief to see them going.  We're lucky enough that there isn't a clinker in the bunch (no "druncles", as a friend in Kodiak calls them), and I'm doubly lucky that Alisa gets along super-well with everyone in my clan.

Really, being so far from the families is one of the only downsides of this extended travel of ours.

Chrissie

Americans are forever protesting their faith.  But if actions really do speak louder than words, the evidence would suggest that in America, Christmas is a semi-pagan holiday given over to the ritualized spending of money.

Australians rarely protest their faith.  To them, Christmas is 'Chrissie', a frankly semi-pagan holiday organized around the ritualized spending of time at the beach.  To an American, Christmas in Australia is reminiscent of the 4th of July without all the tiresome flag waving - the perfect summer holiday.

 Guess which version I prefer!

You Can't Go Back to Iluka

For many months at the end of last year and the beginning of this, as we were up to our eyeballs with buying Galactic and getting ready for the Pacific crossing, I just wanted to be in Iluka, with nothing more ambitous in my routine than a daily surf and hanging out with our friends.

I was a bit surprised, when we finally got here, to find our local friends more or less as flat-out in their daily lives as we were.  Just like us, they're serving the triple demands that people in their thirties and forties find themselves beholden to  - raising the kids, making a living, and, with whatever energies are left over, trying to organize things around some vision of what might add up to a satisfying life.  As every generation finds out, it's all too much, and it warmed our hearts to see that our land friends are just as overwhelmed with it all as we are.

Of course, these folks have the great Australian cure coming up, in the form of a few weeks of summer holidays, beginning now.  But our timing is a bit off.  In the way of these things, our original plan of staying here for months has been whittled down to six weeks, and we're planning to leave soon after Boxing Day.  We caught Iluka while our friends were in their frantic end of the year push (well, "frantic" in a limited Iluka sort of way), and now we're about to leave as their weeks of leisure begin.  So we didn't quite recapture the magic of our previous stays here, when we were in town for months at a time and it seemed that the barbecues and beach sessions would never end.  Even though our small group of friends here includes some of our very favorite people, this time around we didn't have nearly as many peak travel experiences that we've had while hanging out with them in the past.

Maybe that's why surprise and spontaneity are so valuable when you're traveling: long-anticipated destinations have that way of not quite meeting expectations when you finally reach them.  Everyone knows that you can't go home again.  But it turns out that it can also be hard to revisit your favorite travel spots, too.

Elias giving a tour of Galactic.

The Famn Damily

We've had family visiting us in Iluka - both North American and Australian.  Lots of intergenerational/binational barbecues going on, and Elias and Eric have been getting in some good cousin time.

Yesterday we took my parents and my sister and brother-in-law and niece sailing on Galactic.  

It was a windy day, and some of the family are really not natural sailors.  So even though I knew they were enjoying it, their enjoyment was a little...muted at times.  But it was great for us to show them the boat under sail, and to give them a little taste of what our life afloat is like.  Alisa and I were happy to be sailing again, and suddenly keen to start off on the southward leg to Tassie once Christmas is past.

After the sail was over and we were all back ashore, Elias asked us where we would be in five years.  Out of the blue and apropos of nothing, as is his wont.  Don't know, I said, might still be living on the boat.  Might even be in Patagonia!

Alisa gave me a quiet look.  If Daddy's migraines are better we might be in Patagonia, she said.

So that's why she's been hedging on the question of sailing to Patagonia! I thought to myself.  It's not the cold and the horrible sort of weather, it's the fear of dealing with all that by herself while I sleep off what we hope are "just" migraines.

What a softy!

Not an adventure

OK, I'm back from a bit of a mini-holiday from the blog.  Although 'holiday' isn't really the word, as I've been very busy with all sorts of stuff that I won't go into...

We've settled nicely into our old haunt of Iluka - pictures to prove it below - and are enjoying a breather from the on-the-go, "always another anchorage" approach to the life afloat.  Galactic has been sitting in one place for a month now, long enough that I'm thinking I'll have to brave the murky river water and the bull sharks to clean the barnacles off the prop before we'll even be able to move again.

Meanwhile, our family activities have concentrated on the old Iluka standbys: the beach...

...and the barbie.

I suppose we'd get restless if we lived in Iluka for a year or two and did this stuff all the time, our feet being as naturally itchy as they are.  But right now we've got a strong feeling that we earned a bit of this classic Aussie existence, and we're soaking it up.  It's not an adventure, and that's just fine with us.

~~

Meanwhile, one notable development.  I stayed up late finishing a science proposal a few nights ago, submitted it the next day, then collapsed into a quivering heap for a few days, just like I do sometimes on passage.  Luckily, we've got family visiting, and my brother-in-law the fancy Boston doctor has offered a tentative hypothesis of migraines (absent the splitting headache), triggered by sleep deprivation.  It's an idea to go on, and gives us our first suggestion of how we might tackle these mystery bouts of infirmity that occasionally leave Alisa doing everything on her own at sea.