As many sailors know, repairs and upgrades for the boat never cease to appear. Our motto seems to be the same as Lowe's hardware store, "Never stop improving." Our most recent repair is that of our headsail. A couple months back we tore the grommet on our poor old sail and were in need of a repair. Knowing the owner pretty well, we decided to take it over to Kettenhofen Marine, a sail and rigging loft, for a check up. Mr. K had done a wonderful job repairing our sail and sent a list of what he had done to get our sail back in shape. He had to replace the grommet at the tack, restitch the rope, and replace two areas of webbing. Our sail is now in working condition and ready for some action!
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It has been quite some time since I have blogged, mostly because life has been crazy here. I promise that long absences are a thing of the past. I want to make sure that I keep the blog up to date, if for no other reason than to be able to look back on our progress. We have been very busy trying to get settled into some major life changes. Making life changes when you are a couple can be extremely trying so making life changes when it involves several kiddos can seem like an impossible feat. However, I am happy to say we are all adjusting even better than expected.
Let me catch things up. We decided some months ago that life
was too complicated, too stressful and we needed a change. We had acquired too much stuff, too many unnecessary worries, and overall our minds and bodies seemed cluttered with things that just weren't enjoyable. After purchasing Southwind and refitting her we knew for sure that the sea was calling our family louder than ever. And so we went to work evolving a plan.
Our first step would be to get rid of stuff that was tying us down. This may sound easy and I thought, since I love to organize and clean out, that it would be relatively easy work for me. Boy was I in for a rude awakening. We spent weeks, going through everything that we had collected, trying to pair down to necessities. I taped off a section in our family room and told the family that everything we would keep needed to fit in this small space (approximately 6x8). We began to pile things that seemed important into the space and it began to fill up…fast! Then we would reevaluate and more stuff would be piled into garage sale piles. Before all was said and done we would have three garage sales, multiple ads on Craigslist and Ebay, of course carloads to take to charity, and a huge trash collection day. The more we let go of, the more weight that seemed to be lifted. We really started to feel good about going tiny.
By the end of September we were ready to make a move out of our 5 bedroom home. This brings us to where we are today. We have moved into our travel trailer and are embracing the simpler life. It is crowded, but we are finding ways to make life work in small spaces. There are five of us and one bathroom vs. the luxury of three bathrooms. We are learning so many things like patience, new organizing skills, and more importantly how much we can enjoy each others company. We are playing board games, cooking together, and just enjoying being a close family. We are discovering new ways to leave a much smaller footprint everyday. It isn’t all perfect bliss but we can truly say we are happier than we remember being in a long, long time.
So, where will we go from here? Well, we are certain that a bluewater cruiser is in our very near future. We have some things in the works and are excited to soon be sharing news of a new, much more permanent, home.
