2/19/25 - Push Through or Cut Losses? No “Right” Way.

Being towed.

It’s 8:06AM on Wednesday. It is raining outside and we’re under a Winter Weather Advisory. We are safe and warm and docked in Southport, NC.

When we left the dock in New Bern a few days ago, we were sooooo (!) ready. We originally planned for our departure day to be back in July 2024. Then November. Then January. A variety of factors kept pushing us back—not being ready, not having parts, weather delays, medical delays, etc. But…this was our Departure Day! The day we had been waiting for for FOUR years!

**Captain Jeremy is making me tea right now. Thank you, Jeremy.**

We pulled out on a gorgeous day. Cold, but gorgeous. We had a good ride, motoring the whole time (soooo loud!) with some motor sailing . I drafted a blog post that I imagine I will publish later. Haven’t gotten to it yet. I wonder why….

As we motored along that day, I sat in the cockpit and stared at the water. For hours. I loved it. Was the first time in a long time that I felt really relaxed. At night, the stars came out. Breathtaking doesn’t begin to cover it. It reminded me of seeing the stars in the Australian Outback. They were everywhere. And then….the moonrise. I must have dozed a bit on my watch. At one point, I looked off the portside stern and saw a bright orange mass. At first, I didn’t know what it was. I then realized that it was the moon. Amazing.

I was ready to go to bed when my watch was over. Jeremy came up to take over and I crawled into bed with Addie. Just outside of Cape Fear after 1AM, the engine that had been making the same loud WHIRRRRRRR for hours and hours suddenly changed its pitch and then stopped. I jumped out of bed and heard Steve doing the same from Sid’s room. Jeremy, Steve and I quickly huddled and Jeremy took charge. “Holly, you take the helm and turn on the radio. Our Nav lights are out and there’s another boat coming and he won’t be able to see us. Steve, let’s check the engine.”

Thank God it was a calm night. Thank God it wasn’t raining. Thank God it wasn’t a busy stretch of ocean. We were roughly 14 miles offshore. There was enough wind to put the sails up. We sailed back towards land and eventually got close enough to get a cell signal and call for a tow. A few hours later, just after sunrise around 6AM, the tow boat showed up and brought us into Southport, NC. North Carolina. Still in NC.

I was grateful to see the tow boat. The sunset was beautiful. Something deep inside of me said “enjoy this ride on Layla. It could be your last.” This was going to be a major day of questioning the plan. And that it most certainly was.

Amidst the sunny (cold) and beautiful weather, there was a major squall popping up inside of me. The engine doesn’t work. Again.

To put it mildly, it is not easy to get parts for our engine (it’s not easy to get parts for any engine but ours, a Perkins, is especially difficult). I could write a book on that alone. And now we need another engine part, a fresh water pump. We have reached out to several places and are actively working on the issue. But now we wait. And sit. And think. And pay ~$170/night to sit here during a Winter Weather Advisory. $170/night until we leave this place. And we can’t leave until our engine is fixed.

Add “engine” to our running list of current boat projects/issues:

1) NEW - Engine issues

2) NEW - Through hulls have a slow leak - We used Addie’s silly putty to make a circle around the pipes to figure out where the leak was coming from. Jeremy says that we should get a haul out before we head to the Bahamas to have that looked at ($1,000 for the haul out alone. Doesn’t even get into addressing the issue of what might be wrong).

3) NEW - Our fuel/RPM gauge isn’t working - We think this is a minor issue, but we still need to get the materials we need to fix this.

4) Not new but feeling more urgent - Raymarine (Radar) - Our current system is archaic and shuts down frequently and randomly. A new system will cost $2K. We ordered a new ipad with a GPS chip in the meantime. Should arrive today.

5) Oven not working - Not sure why. Have some ideas. Thinking this is a $50 fix.

6) Bow Thruster still not working.

We haven’t even checked our outboard engine yet (for the dinghy). I’m nervous about that not working for various reasons.

So….these projects and costs are adding up quite quickly. We have been saving for this adventure for a long time so we have some cushioning, but it will be eaten up soon at this rate. That’s the money piece.

Let’s move onto the time aspect. Money is one factor but time is the more important factor for us here. How are we spending our time? We spend our time working (Steve and me sometimes), doing homeschool, dishes, cooking, boat projects and then crashing and watching a movie at the end of the day because we are so tired from the day. The kids spend a lot—A LOT—of their free time on their phones, playing video games, etc. If I took a snapshot of how we are living now and how we have been living for the past few months, this thought train would be over immediately and I would have already sold the boat by now.

Steve resting in the saloon after sailing through the night.

But….there is the ever-present promise and hope for something better. There is the promise of warm weather, of sun and the beach, snorkelling, scuba diving, new friends and new places…..I think of the “Who Moved My Cheese?” book. “Imagining myself enjoying new cheese even before I find it, leads me to it…” BUT…..

…our window for that envisioned world continues to get narrower and narrower. For insurance purposes, we need to be north of Georgia by July 1. Additionally, we are sending Addie to space camp with her former school district the first week in May because that was something we agreed to with her before we left. We are also planning to meet up with friends in the Bahamas (?) in May. A few weeks ago, Steve and I talked and we decided that we wouldn’t try to “do the Caribbean” at this point. We would just stay in the Bahamas to relax and enjoy ourselves (instead of rushing all the way south to Grenada…) and then we would do the eastern USA for the summer and see where we are after that.

Now, however, we don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck here. And we don’t have a car. There are lots of little shops and cute cafes around (and that will be fun), but we’ll still be bundling up and wearing the same few items of warm clothing we brought with us. I should do laundry today.

All of us are tired. Emotionally empty. Steve and I are stressed. It’s been one papercut after another for the past several months. Everyone in the boating community talks about how the first year sucks but after that you get to know your boat and it gets better. Steve and I took an inventory of our family’s time on the boat. Without a doubt, 90-95% of has been frustrating.

The darkest hour is just before dawn. And it should get better. But…there might be a lot more “suck” before then. At what point, do you say “enough is enough?” I thought yesterday about how much money we’ll likely spend on parts. We could easily spend a month in the Bahamas at an AirBnb for that. But we liked the idea of exploring, of movement, of the freedom the boat gives us.

We are not thriving; we are surviving. And judging by all data, there’s a lot more “suck” in our future for a while. Jeremy told us the other day that we’d be surprised by how many people he helps get to the Bahamas. And then a month later they ask him for help coming back. That said, he told us that he thinks we’ll make it because we’re willing to roll up our sleeves. *sigh*

Other random thoughts:

I’ve never been a quitter. I have continued when I should have kept going (and been rewarded) and I have continued when I should have stopped long before then (and have regretted it).

Would we regret it for the rest of our lives if we quit now? Probably, but I don’t know. Should we give ourselves a limit? If it’s not better in ___ (a month, two months, two weeks, etc.), then we change our plans?

How much do we involve the kids in these discussions? What is a healthy amount?

How will the kids feel? What lessons and feelings will they take from this experience if we quit/change course?

We spent four years freeing ourselves from obligations and schedules. Now that we’ve untangled, is there something else we want to do with this phase?

We don’t have our house anymore. It’s being rented. If we went home to St. Louis, we would need to rent a place.

There’s so much. Just so much. I’m so tired of thinking. Steve and I are figuring that we’ll be here for at least a week. Jeremy has another delivery that he has do on March 1st so we don’t know if our windows will line up again for a while. Or….we could go without Jeremy. That scares me at the moment, but I might warm up to it. Jeremy hesitated the other day when he said this: “You guys don’t need me. Steve’s got this, Holly. The only reason I’m here is for you.” True. But the peace of mind that Steve feels by having him here is significant. The burden of navigation, knowing the sails, knowing the knots, knowing the radio, fixing the things that inevitaby go wrong are all on him right now and it’s really heavy.

Too many thoughts. I need to get on with my day. Steve just finished a meeting and has another one in a half hour. I should probably do some homeschooling with Addie but I think we might have a relaxing day to simply enjoy each other’s company. It’s been a while.

But first…we need to shower before the freezing rain hits and the marina turns off the water. That dock is going to be slippery today… I’m grateful for an electric cord that works. Steve, Jeremy (and even Blaine) spent the majority of their Sunday working to figure out why our electric cords weren’t working. After two trips to West Marine (one via the marine courtesy car and one ride from Blaine), our eventual diagnosis was that the pedestals at that dock weren’t working. They are today, though, and I am very grateful to have heat on this cold, rainy windy day.