Essays

The End

By John Guy

Not long ago, on a nippy Indiana morning, 40 degrees, trees turning to orange and red, I walked our neighborhood’s three mile circle, listening to my new iPod, loaded that morning with The Barefoot Man.

With warmth and affection, I listened to his songs: The Hope Town Ferry, Bahama Mama, several salutes to Abaco, including “At Nippers, Down in Abaco . . . . Intoxicated, Inebriated, Three Notches Past Tipseeee . . . .”

Then, with no warning, tears filled my eyes. For a moment, I could not move. Memories crossed my mental video disk like a slide show: the crystal sea and Marsh Harbor, Cartagena, Isla Mujeres, Bermuda and St. Maarten, our glorious east coast, and the sounds of Trinidad.

Two months earlier, as we turned in to the Chesapeake Bay, I knew the end was near. The last leg of our trip from Miami was cold and tedious. Thanks to Chris Parker’s accurate forecast of following wind and waves, we made good time, and so decided to stretch our trip to the mouth of The Potomac. As the day wound down, his forecast for thunderstorms also proved accurate. At first, we saw them from afar, none seeming to threaten, but in less than five minutes, a cell appeared over us and let go everything it had. The final hour to our anchorage, in the dark, wind and rain, using only radar and chart plotter, seemed like four.

After Chichi dropped anchor, and all was secure, I went below to douse exterior lights and to log the trip. As I turned off switches, turned on others, my eyes began to tear. Chichi appeared and asked what was wrong. “I am done,” I said. She said: “I am too.”

During subsequent months, when we listed Pachamama for sale, when the buyer appeared, the day we accepted an offer, and as we planned to retrieve our belongings, we cried again, and again.

Our attachment to Pachamama, and to the places it took us since September, 2001, runs deep. Someone said, “all good things come to an end,” but awareness of the inevitable is not palliative. During the last two years, we asked many persons “what next,” but none had answers that naturally guide another to tranquility. We asked Chris Parker how he handled the transition. His answers appear in the essay “The Intrusion of Real Life.”

Leaving Neptune is only half the story. The other half is the daunting prospect of finding a future, of discovering goals that will yield new joys and satisfactions. In both theory and fact, we have unlimited opportunities to travel, to write, to teach, and to volunteer. However, in the first weeks, these opportunities do not fill our time. Real day-to-day life is dominated neither by the routine of going to work nor by challenges inherent in the cruising life. Watching “Ellen,” “Dancing With The Stars,” The Colts and The Pacers, is not the same as a night cap, in the cockpit, with friends, or planning/provisioning for the next voyage.

Still, we must move forward. During our first eight weeks on land, we have considered these opportunities:

• Volunteering to be a Disaster Action Team (DAT) member for The American Red Cross. Comprehending how this magnificent organization responds is a revelation. Perhaps the majority of volunteers respond only to local natural disasters, such as home and apartment fires. Most of these calls come at night or on weekends because professional staff handles them during the work day. A volunteer is on call one night a month, and one weekend per month. A DAT volunteer seldom works more than 4 to 5 hours, or the time required to establish need and to find one to three nights of housing, food and clothing for clients. More committed volunteers make themselves available for regional and national disasters. These commitments are for 15 days, usually to open and operate shelters.
• Teaching is another possibility, either casually in a continuing education environment, or more seriously as adjunct to the faculty of a local college or high school. This is a fine avenue to new friends, not unlike relationships formed at marinas.
• Adult continuing education classes offer both learning and new friendships. In our town, you may study decoration, Italian cooking and how to design a web page, to name a few.
• Renovating the kitchen, and other portions of a home that was only modestly maintained during seven years, provides a refreshed living atmosphere and opportunities to create something new.
• Learning a musical instrument is a hoot, especially something simple, like the ukulele, which has only four strings. DVDs provide good first instruction, and some songs can be played and sung with only two chords. Perhaps you will see us soon on a stage near you.
• We never underestimate the reward of watching a good movie, an afternoon of Big Ten football, or the performances of professional and amateur actors and entertainers. These are icing on the cake. Netflix helps a lot. Although we usually order popular films, we recently have requested Smothers Brothers television shows and an old, rather simple and out-of-date Carlo Ponti film, “The Tenth Victim,” which reminded us that Ursula Andres was more than a Bond girl.
• With our library card and home computer, we can search for anything, reserve, and receive an email alert when the item is ready for pick up. This is almost as good as trading books at a marina’s social center.
• Sailors tend to be trim and healthy. Not so with our land-based brethren. Fortunately, we ran into a Medicare supplement plan that calls us “Silver Streakers.” This means free or subsidized memberships at local health clubs. This is no small benefit, perhaps as much as $500 of value per year.

This is our life now. We will adapt. But, at no point, during no moment of quiet reflection, will we forget seven years on the sea. We did not do everything others do, but we experienced much more than most do. The experience on the sea was one-tenth of our lives, about the time spent for higher education. With education at one end of life, and experience at the other, what more could we ask.

Associates: John and Chichi Guy

Note: John and Chichi would like to learn how other returned cruisers have adapted. You can email them here.