The stress of preparation

Don't feel sorry for me. I know we're leaving for warmer climes shortly, and while I'm not leaving my job, I'm certainly not going to be living it 12 hours a day. Regardless, preparing for going cruising in a 6 week period is one of the most stressful things I've done in my life.

We had our first garage sale this weekend and made almost $2k. Not bad for a garage sale, but I've taken a lot of my life carefully selecting the things I own, so to see them going out the door, in near perfect condition, for cents on the dollar tugs at my heart a bit. I know - it's just stuff - but when I started my business close to 18 years ago I was - literally - pulling change from underneath cushions to buy food to eat. Oh well, we're dedicated to going, and this is just part of it.

We also managed to sell one of our cars. That just leaves the garage sale this weekend to get rid of more of our stuff, renting our house, changing our address, dealing with homeschooling, packing, moving and storing our stuff and lots more to do's.

We have contractors swarming all over our boat over the next two weeks. North Sails is repairing our sails. We're having a generator, air conditioning and autopilot installed. We're having the cockpit enclosure made functional (right now you can't close it up all the way and it's tough to install, so there are leaks and it's not very useful). I still have to order a liferaft, get the ditch bag set up, order a sea anchor, buy a new dinghy and engine, install the motor lift, install a macerator, pick and install a water filtration system, install new lifelines, put a new starting battery in, install a cell phone and wireless amplifier and take care of a million little details.

I get two reactions from the people I share our trip plans with - I'm jealous, or you're insane. I think you have to be a bit crazy to do something like this, but you only live once. It's easy to dream, but it's really tough to make it real. It will be worth it.