[note: As I write this the sun is out and it has been out for 4 days in a row.  The previous record on this trip was 2 straight days.  We are finally getting to wear our shorts.  We are having a great time visiting beaches and putting on sunscreen]

It happened…the North Pacific High Pressure ridge has firmly established itself off the Washington and BC coast.  That means beautiful blue skies and NW winds EVERYDAY!  For us on Terremoto!, the NW wind is our ticket to our home waters in Puget Sound.  

In some respects, it is difficult to think we are heading  home.  All the emotions that come with completing the droal (dream/goal) of sailing to Alaska and back are starting to occur.  Here are the top three emotions I am experiencing as we approach the final leg of our Alaskan Adventure: 

• Sadness: the adventure is almost over and that brings with it a sense of loss…a sadness that comes when something or someone is gone.  Every morning for the last 80 days, I woke up at first light listening for the wind, wondering what adventures lie ahead of us for that day and wondering if our route through the rocks and islands ahead was a good route. I woke up wondering if the currents were going to flow as the computer software had predicted or if they were going to continue to play tricks.  It is a great way to wake up, but now the excitement that has been part of this adventure is almost all behind us.  I am sad that the ‘onboard’ routine Susan and I have settled into will end.  Sure, some elements will morph onto land. I think I will continue to make Susan’s coffee every morning once we reach land. I should add that I don’t drink coffee or much of anything hot in the morning. It was a new task for me to make a cup of coffee for Susan each morning.  It was great fun for me to see the smile it brought to her face when the aroma reached her nose and her eyes opened to see the steaming cup of coffee.  It was often the only thing that would coax her out of her warm bunk on some of the frigid mornings during the early parts of our trip.  Now, those little things will be gone.  The sadness isn’t overpowering, but it is tangible.  I know I can focus on other things and easily overcome the sadness.  But I don’t think I will, not yet anyway. I am going to let the sadness rattle around inside for a while.  It seems like the right thing to do as we come to the end of this adventure together.  I won’t let it become all consuming; this isn’t a depression.  Just the sadness that comes at the end of an adventure. 
• Fear of Unknown:  Heading into the unknown was part of the adventure Susan and I sought when we left our cozy slip on Lake Washington way back in May.  It seems funny that I would now be slow to embrace the unknown of returning home. It means returning to a more traditional life and to work.  When Susan and I decided together to take two years off work, we knew we wanted to have two grand summer adventures and two winters of creative adventure.  Once we reach Seattle, it will mean the end of our summer adventures.  We now only have one winter/spring between us and the unknown of what work we will do for the next decade, or more, of our lives.     The unknown of the future is probably made even more unsettling because we have spent so much of this summer talking and fantasizing about what we would do if we could do anything.  They were great exercises and wonderful conversations.  But, they were fantasies.  Once we return to land, we must start morphing the fantasies into realities and that means facing some unknowns.   There is also the unknown of what form sailing will take for us.  We have been primarily a racing family.  Sure, we took one or two week cruises each summer and sailed to Maui and back, but never anything approaching the time and challenges of this adventure.  We have loved this experience.  We know this summer has changed the way we look at sailing.  It has given us new skills.  It has also given us a renewed appreciation for the joy of being on the water and just sailing.  I am not sure what role racing will play in our sailing future.  It may be that we get sucked right back into the passion of racing.  But right now, we are dreaming about how to make cruising more comfortable. What equipment will make a boat more cruise-able…everything is cruising oriented in our minds.  Is that just the result of spending months on the water cruising or is it a shift of our sailing passion into more of a cruising mindset?  The answer is an unknown. 
• Excitement:  I know it is contradictory to be both sad and excited.  Such is the province of emotions – they don’t need to make logical sense I am excited about returning home.  Returning home means we made it – we will have accomplished another droal.  Last summer’s Vic Maui first-to-finish win and this summer’s Alaska Adventure were major dreams.  To known that we have overcome each challenge creates a deep sense of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment.  Doubling that joy is the fact that all this adventure was accomplished together with my best friend, Susan.  I have been able to see my wife persevere across an ocean with 4 broken bones.  I have seen her routinely set sails on the bow in high winds and rough seas as well as drive the boat in trying and tense situations.  Then, when we are at the dock and it is time to go shore side, I get to see her transform into a beautiful woman who loves to walk beside me and hold my hand.  We are content to just be together.  I am excited to be back at home with Susan and the rest of our lives together.  I am also kinda excited to be able to standup fully when I get out of bed…Excited to be able to jump out of bed without first having to crawl over Susan and wake her up…Excited to have a big comfy chair and room to put my feet up…Excited to have a refrigerator, freezer and hot running water…Even excited to have a toilet that flushes itself with no requirement to ‘store’ the waste for disposal later.  Life on land has things that excite me.   

We aren’t home by any means…we still have a couple hundred miles to go.  But, the dangers and beauty of this segment of our journey are known.   Making our decision to focus on getting home easier is the fact that the beautiful weather means the anchorages and docks in Desolation Sound, the Canadian Gulf Islands and the San Juan Islands are now very full.  The solitude we enjoyed throughout most of our journey is now over.  We are back ‘on the grid’ in a big way.  I remember one of my first blogs and writing about how unnerving it was to have no other boats in sight as we left Sucia Island and were heading for Canadian waters.  Now, it is just the opposite.  We now must watch out for all the boats crisscrossing our path.  We went from seeing two boats a day last month to having to alter course twice every hour to avoid hitting boats. 

I have also injured my neck and that has made anchoring and lifting with my right arm difficult.  We aren’t sure the extent of the injury.  We know that the numbness in my fingers and occasionally in my arm is not something to ignore.  Staying out longer keeps me from starting the mending process and getting a real diagnosis of the issue and that seems like the most prudent thing to do. 

So, we are sailing for home.  We hope to be in our slip by this time next week (8/14).  We plan to stop at Schooner Cove, Silva Bay, Pt. Roberts, San Juans (hopefully Spencer Spit), Port Townsend and then home.  Can’t wait to see everyone.  Until then…