July 14, 2006 - Elan Update Part 7: Delays, Delays
by Scott & Wendy Bannerot

How many of you out there have been cruising for a while? You know those times when the luster fades - maybe a rough passage, broken gear, perhaps the physical exhaustion of putting in a lot of miles? I remember one friend pulling in to New Zealand a while back from a Pacific island cruising season, tying up to the slip, and exclaiming he didn't want to pull that anchor one more time for a few months. Another fellow came in and said, "I know this sounds sacrilegious, but I'm about South Pacific'd-out. I'm ready for a long break off the boat and then we're heading on home." That's certainly one of the more extreme comments I've heard. While not exactly the same as these guys, I've certainly felt ground down at times. Keeping our vessels in good nick and voyaging successfully takes quite a bit of energy and can on occasion be frustrating. Small issues get magnified. You look at something broken and can't figure it out, then you wake up after a rest and it's easy again. You defer maintenance and other work. You're dragging.

The good old days...we know we'll be back, but it's been a while. If you're out there now or getting ready to go, enjoy it to the hilt. If you're a bit worn down, perk up and remember, the best times are here and now.

I have a secret formula to cure all of this. I believe my solution will last a long time. Park your boat somewhere with the idea of heading back out fairly soon, then go back to work in the business you left behind in order to go cruising in the first place (don't worry, it's a business you really enjoy, even if it is a lot of work). Instead of waking up to the gentle lapping of waves on the hull, you're in a house, and it's an alarm jangling. You have to get in a vehicle you've reluctantly acquired and drive on a strip of concrete to your workplace. You will not be home for about 13 hours. When you get home you will be tired and mostly ready for bed. You will do this for many days in a row. That deep feeling of appreciation - as you watch a tropical sunrise over some palm-studded islet with only the faint chatter of nesting seabirds in your ears, sipping a hot cup of coffee and mulling the delicious possibilities of what you and your small family might do together ALL DAY - will become a faded memory. You will watch the tangible remnant of your sailing life - your boat - sit day after day, accumulating bottom growth, everything on deck fading with sun exposure, a reflection of the lack of attention that comes with inactivity. You will miss at least two sailing seasons. Then, when your friends email from places like the Marshall Islands and Fiji, you will begin to hang on every little thing they say...even offhand comments about amp budgeting and other such talk integral to the boating life. I think it's safe to say that when you reach this point you're good for YEARS offshore - anything and everything can break - as long as it's not life-threatening and you're in some island paradise, you won't care.

I think the approximate evolution of most longer-term cruises goes something like this: initial dream, exciting planning phase, boat purchase, refit initiation, refit grind, the big departure (you stagger out after the final hysteria of too-long, too-expensive refit and cutting the land ties), incredible elation and shock and adjustment to actual voyage of your dream, slow deterioration and depreciation of boat and equipment, repeat refit, repeat departure and voyaging, come back to a land base for a while to regroup...and I'd say well over half of the cases terminate their cruising here and move on to something else. If you're still hanging on at this point, and you still have all of the dreams and desires you ever had, then you are a terminal case. I guess this is my category. And I guess having inadvertently applied the secret formula for perpetual appreciation of the voyaging life no matter what, I'm so ready to go again I can barely stand it. This is more or less the case with Wendy, although complicated by the continuing medical difficulties. And Ryan, well, he's usually up for just about anything.

At the time of our last update, it looked like we had a good shot of doing a refit, then sailing Elan out to the Coral Sea to commute to work for Nomad Sportfishing, guiding fishing trips by day and hanging out like old times in the evenings, with some interludes of family cruising activities in between charters and a few nice little bluewater voyages in between venues.

Not this year. First, Wendy's chronic pain remains unsolved through the latest iteration of interthecal pain pump medication experimentation and tweaking. Second, the Nomad Sportfishing schedule changed, and is now much more temporally and spatially broken up. We'd lose money refitting Elan and then going out to work the adjusted schedule. So Plan B is, since the trips are shorter, I go off on the mothership Odyssey 2 and work in the Coral Sea, then come home between trips (it's a great job, and most certainly a bluewater fix, and I'm very lucky indeed to be able to do this). Ryan and I are doing some work on Elan and her equipment. We have every chance of getting in a little trip somewhere in between the Coral Sea jobs, and at this point we hardly care where. Anything would be great. We do have the 2007 South Pacific sailing season commencing in 11 months. That will be the next opportunity to "return to paradise" for a more substantial interlude.

The point is, if anybody out there is wearing down a bit or feeling the grind of a refit, or long-term cruising exhaustion, I'm here cheering you on, and wishing I was out there with you.