Oh well

[Hilde’s log]

Well, God does not appear to be willing. I woke this morning to the slapping of a halyard about 4:30 a.m., 30 minutes before our official wake up call, to find the wind blowing like 60 and Raven tossing at anchor in the dark. David looked up the forecast and sure enough, it was for south winds (good direction) at 20-25 knots (just at the top of our acceptable tolerance – for us, not for Raven; nothing bothers her) and seas to 11 feet. Not so great. If we absolutely had to go today, we could make it just fine, but we’d be whipped by the time we arrived in West End after 10-11 hours of roughish weather and it wouldn’t be fun. This is supposed to be fun! The remaining forecast for the next four days shows strong northerly winds. We decided, after much teeth gnashing, to go on to Ft. Lauderdale later this morning and hole up for the next window.

The good news is that after our practice run at getting ready (and finding so many things that weren’t) we are now really ready, and when that next window appears we can go for it. We also learned about windows – they really are short and unpredictable. Monday it looked as though we had a four day window, but that turned into two days and then one day pretty quickly. We have been told to go on the first day of a window and now see the wisdom in that. Had we been able to leave Wednesday, the first day of the window, we’d have made it with no problems. Thursday and Friday and on into the weekend, the forecast deteriorated rapidly, day by day. Sometimes the weather holds and sometimes it doesn’t, so go on the first day and let the rest of the window take care of itself.

It’s interesting from a psychological aspect, how I get so wound about going, creating artificial deadlines for myself and then stressing when I miss them. At least now I see myself doing it. Somehow I have decided that we are “late” that we are “missing the opportunity”, that we will have to rush the trip – the voices in my head are loud and urgent and ridiculous. I have not yet managed to relax into a long horizon, but I am getting a lot of practice at going with the flow, with letting everything be all right, regardless of what we do or don’t do, whether we go here or there or stay put, and regardless of what other boaters are doing.