Insecurities

Current Location: Prickly Bay, Grenada. Preparing to leave for Carriacou tomorrow or Monday.

What is going on? Where is home?

All the things that used to define me are disappearing. Our house in Cumbria is sort of sold, but sort of not. We have a small apartment in Stroud but apart from my mum and my brother and family we don’t know anyone else in the area. No GlaxoSmithKline any longer, in fact no ‘job’ at all. Our car is broken. And our boat is for sale. We have our eye on a new(er) boat but I don’t want two boats at the same time if we can avoid it. Until recently when people asked where ‘home’ was I would have said “Europe” but post Brexit even that doesn’t feel right any longer.

Will we ever be able to settle down ANYWHERE? Do I want to? When? Where?

Should I stop listening to philosophy podcasts [ha, ha]?

It’s not just me though. I think many of us lucky baby boomers feel the same. A good percentage of our best friends have also travelled widely and several of us face the same questions. Grandchildren, ill health and ageing parents seem to be the issues for most of us. And these are hard questions. In the past we were living 9 or 10 months a year on the boat in Greece and Turkey. Petronella really was ‘home’. We averaged two or three thousand miles a year culminating in 8,000 the year we crossed Atlantic. Last year, a very difficult year for our family, we spent over half the year in the UK.

Maybe this is just what another month in the boatyard does to you. At least we launched on Saturday and the knackered water pump is repaired….again! All the jobs are done and Petronella is looking as good as ever. We will sail to Carriacou and then onwards through the Grenadines to Martinique. In just over a month we will be back in the UK again for Christmas without my dad, Sam or Jenny for the first year ever it seems.

Meanwhile, excitement mounts on the other side of the Atlantic. Dave & Melinda, Dave & M-C and Steve & Diedre are all getting ready for their own Atlantic crossings. Fair winds, big ocean rollers and harmonious passages to you all. I feel some more parties coming on. And JoJo, when will you be back?