Thoughts re now

Commenters wonder if we are enthusiastic about the rest of our trip.  Yes, we can now picture staying on the boat 'til spring and are looking forward to each part of the trip.   When Tom comes back on Sunday, we plan to spend a month exploring the outer banks near here in North Carolina, arriving by the end of September to near Wilmington where we'll find a place to keep the boat for a while while I fly back to Arkansas to handle a rent house turnover and, if time, to visit my family, especially my brother.

Then we hope to poke our way south.  We see many places along South Carolina that we'd like to know better and there are several places along eastern Florida that we'd feel at home in when we visit again.  By the cool weather, we hope to be in the Florida keys hanging out 'til a couple of friends from Arkansas fly the coop and bring their boats down that way.  

After that, we don't know.  Maybe follow one those couples out toward the Caribbean. 

Anyway, most of the time, I can't think of living anywhere else but on this boat.

Just now I was sitting here, in the cockpit typing and a little mist of water (the tiniest rain) hit my face while all around there is a mixture of blue sky and multicolored clouds.   If I were inside, I would never have noticed that little mist.  And all the time, the wind blows a little or a lot and makes sounds in the rigging around me.  I would feel so isolated in a room in a house.

But also, yesterday, the boat pitched and jerked so much in the waves from the south that I found myself wanting to not stand, but sit,  or better yet, get off the boat onto a steady surface.    Sometimes, there are sounds at night that I hadn't heard before and I have to get up to figure them out, in case something has changed positions for the worse. 

The reality is that the outdoors is always very vivid and in my face.   Most of the time I'm fine with it but sometimes want a little hidey hole to burrow up in (and actually, the boat provides that too!)