A Vacation from our Vacation

<WARNING> Real feelings ahead. Proceed with caution. </WARNING>

When you try the cruising lifestyle, you're going to come across a lot of people who tell you what to do. (Particularly old white men who see their power waning as their bodies slowly decay into a puddle of clogged arteries and bushy ear hair.) They tell you "go to this marina" or "check out this bar" and proceed to bore you with fifteen minutes worth of directions you'll never remember and information you could have gotten in five seconds from your phone. (And most of the time you weren't interested in "this marina" or "that bar" in the first place.) They tell you what boat to buy, what equipment to get, what route to take, and when to go home.

Those people suck, but they're kind of easy to ignore and make fun of once you've driven your boat away from them.

The harder thing to deal with is when people you like tell you what to do when cruising, usually because they don't actually tell you to do anything. They show you in beautiful pictures on Instagram, or in regaling incredible and glorious adventures they experienced on Facebook. You find yourself thinking, I could have more fun than that, or we could go someplace like that, or goddamit, I could look that good in a bikini if I only ingested coconut water and celery sticks for a few months. But then, suddenly, you're at that place, you're in that bikini, and you're not always an Instagram picture. In fact, most of the time you're not an Instagram picture. Most of the time, your stomach is bulging, your boat has a giant scratch in it, and you're scrambling to fix the fan belt that has fallen off the engine for the seventh time that day.

The reason I'm telling you all this is to cushion the blow as I rip off the bandaid and reveal the painful truth: we're headed back to Buffalo. We're parking the boat and we're spending some time at home. (At least for now.)

Now, you're probably very confused. After all, my quippy and amusing blog posts have made it look like we've generally been having a great time. And don't get me wrong; we have been having a great time. There have been some really amazing moments on this trip.

Let's put this all in some context, and maybe get you some pretty pictures to look at while you deal with the sting of that bandaid coming off.

We left Fort Myers Beach with the intention of heading to Key West and exploring the Keys. It was our first chance in a while to do some off-shore sailing and head south along the Gulf coast.

It was nice to tip over because of wind again and not an elaborate boat tipping contraption.

The water was weirdly light, almost exactly the same color as the "sea foam green" you might find in a Crayola 64 pack.

In the Crayola 64 pack, our dinghy is "Goldenrod."

We decided to stop at a convenient anchorage near Marco Island to prepare for the 12 hour crossing to Key West. We anticipated being in that anchorage for a few days, so we had stocked up on groceries, reading material, and things to do.

No cats were allowed to participate in puzzling. 

Those couple of days were clear, but pretty windy and cold. It was nice sitting in a safe place to hide instead of venturing across open water. And the moon looked pretty too.

If I mooned the moon, would the moon moon me back?

The next morning, things started to go south. Well, north. (We'll get there.)

Justin and I have a house up in Buffalo that we're in the process of flipping. Right now, it's sitting vacant, but Justin has a sump pump alarm set up through his phone to keep an eye on things. That means he can text the house and ask it whether the power is on, what the temperature is inside, whether the sump pump is still running, if it met any other nice houses lately, etc. Justin checked in with the house like he usually does, and unfortunately, discovered the temperature inside had dropped dramatically.

He then called our friend, real estate agent, and the true hero of this story, MJ, to swing by the house and check out the situation. She went in the house and discovered several inches of freezing cold water pouring into the basement, with a pipe spewing even more water everywhere it could. MJ bravely ventured into the wet and cold and managed to turn the water off. (Oh, and btw, if anyone needs a realtor in Buffalo, check her out.)

The next twelve hours were a blur of activity. We pulled the boat into a marina, rented a car, and drove to the airport. Justin left for Buffalo that following morning to deal with the situation and rescue the house. (Honestly, when we went on this trip, I was much more concerned about the boat being submerged than a house, but what did I know?) That left me alone with the cats on Marco Island for five days.

A few of those days were pretty cold and rainy, so Justin didn't miss much. He did manage to fix the plumbing, furnace, and overall wetness in the house, luckily.

That first night without Justin, I walked to the beach on the other side of the island. It took forever to get there. I had assumed you just walk towards the coast, but it turns out most of the coast is lined with private hotels and resorts, each guarded by a bored guy in a tiny booth who gives you a very judgy look if you walk to close. When I finally figured out where the public beach access spot was, I was pretty proud of myself.

Yes, I am wearing a backpack meant for six-year-olds in this picture. 

 Once I made it there, I got to enjoy an incredible sunset. This was my first Gulf Coast sunset, where I was able to watch the sun go down right on the water.

Texas is waaaaay over there. 

I spent the next few days wandering around Marco Island. There's a nice historical museum and a really good Mexican restaurant, but not a ton more that you can get to without a car. So I whiled away my days enjoying the marina wifi, catching up on some books, and talking to Justin on the phone.

At some point during these talks, we came to a conclusion: our time, at least for now, would be better spent in Buffalo. Once he got home and gave me a call, Justin and I realized we were feeling a little homesick and ready be in familiar Buffalo territory for a while for a few reasons. While we had been considering a trek to the Bahamas as the next leg of our trip, it would be prohibitively expensive to get the cats there. And as bad as the weather is in Buffalo, the weather we had been having in Florida wasn't nice enough to justify continuing a very expensive, very long vacation. Plus, in case you didn't already know, Justin and I had been short-term foster parents for a while in Buffalo, and we were excited to get back to having kids around again. (Justin's already shopping for a bigger boat that can fit a bunch of kids in addition to our bunch of cats.)

Now, I know the Bahamas are great, the Keys are amazing, and there are a ton of other places we should see. And we hope after some time relaxing on solid land where we can have all the hot water, freezer space, and Tim Hortons  we could ever want that we'll come back ready to see those places. But when it comes down to it, this is our trip, and no matter what anybody else does or says we should do or posts on their Instagram, we have to do what's best for us.

On my last day on Marco Island without Justin, I went to a slightly different part of the beach with a much better marked access point. Instead of directly meeting the ocean, Tigertail Beach has a section that opens onto a tidal pool where lots of birds and fish love to hang out. I ran into a very large blue heron who let me get surprisingly close to take his picture. Of course, after becoming bird paparazzi I discovered a sign telling weirdos like me to leave the birds alone.

This heron was very disappointed I was not a fish. 

Past the tidal pool was the regular beach, where I was able to waste a relaxing hour or so while I waited for Justin's flight to come in.

There was a couple fooling around in the bushes five feet from where this picture was taken.

There were a ton of shells on the beach too, of all different sizes, colors, and shapes. If Justin's flight came in a little later, I could have spent hours combing the beach for the perfect shells to take home. (Which I would then forget in my backpack until they were ground into powder.)

None of these were big enough to make a cute mermaid bra, unfortunately.

Justin and his plane landed safely, and the next morning we left Marco Island. The plan was to head back the way we came to a cheap marina in LaBelle where we could store the boat while we drove home to Buffalo. So we untied the boat and set off from my temporary home at Rose Marina.

Yes, that's another pirate ship on the left. They're stalking me.

The weather app on my phone said there was a zero percent chance of rain, so naturally, there was a dull, dreary drizzle coming down as we left the harbor. We had gone about ten minutes when Justin shouted, "take the wheel!" And hurled himself down into the cabin. The engine had started over-heating. I steered the boat as best I could without a motor and very little wind (I was starting to get Lake Okeechobee flashbacks) while trying to avoid the very shallow water around the harbor mouth.

After a few minutes, Justin managed to put one of two spare fan belts on the engine and we were underway once more. An hour after that, the engine started overheating again and the spare fan belt had to be replaced.

This time, we were further out into the gulf and crashing into some very choppy waters. (Of course, the app on my phone had told me we were in for calm seas.) I got to stand at the wheel, balancing on the rolling waves as best I could and shivering in the cold, while Justin scrambled below to put on our last spare belt.

That belt only lasted about half an hour. Next, Justin resorted to shoelaces. (Alright, alright, it was actually a bit of thin, spare rope we had on board, but if he ran out of that, Justin would have used shoelaces.) The MacGyvered fan belts lasted anywhere between twenty minutes and two hours before they burned through, and we had to go half of our normal, lightning fast top speed of seven knots. So we had a long, tension-filled two days before we finally crawled into a marina at Fort Myers. By the time we got there, I was feeling pretty ready to live in something where there was no chance of it drifting into something or sinking if it broke.

Fort Myers itself was a pretty cool area, and we got to see quite a bit of it as we criss-crossed the city looking for a new fan belt that would get us back to LaBelle.

I took this picture half way along a bridge that took roughly 436 years to cross. 

Eventually, we found a few fan belts that would work and went back to the free docks at LaBelle. (We didn't have to fight anyone to get a slip. Again.) And then we finally pulled in to a small marina outside a bunch of cattle farms where we plan on leaving the boat for a while. It's safe, secure, and far enough inland that it probably won't be affected by rogue hurricanes. The walk to the marina office took us past some of those peaceful farms and made me feel even more nostalgic for the farmland near our house in Buffalo. (Granted, those farms are covered in quite a bit more snow right now.)

Home, home on the raaange....in Florida...

The next few days went by in spurts of busy activity between lazy gobs of time with nothing to do. Staying at the marina gave us access to the outdoor pool down the road. Knowing that this was my last chance to go swimming for a while, I forced myself into the definitely-not-at-all heated water and swam around for a few minutes until all of my limbs were purple.

Then, the packing began. Everything in lockers and drawers had to be moved to Rubbermaid containers, and things in Rubbermaid containers had to get thrown out, or moved to other containers, all while we exclaimed over and over "why did we bring all this crap?!"

Dis boat for Tiny?

Once the boat was mostly packed up, the super nice lady who worked in the marina office offered to drive us to pick up our rental car: an SUV that was not quite as ginormous as I had hoped. That afternoon I had a great workout carrying our entire lives from our smallish boat to the even smaller car. Justin got to play the world's most epic game of tetris fitting everything in, while still leaving just enough room for the cat crates.

That evening we relaxed on the boat like we had been for the past four months, but there were sudden and jarring differences: we couldn't keep any food in the fridge because it needed to defrost for our time away, all of our pots and pans were in the car so we couldn't make dinner. Oh, and the generator stopped working and there was no time to fix it before we left, so that meant showering in the mildly gross marina office down the road.

Good thing I still had my shower shoes from college!

However, that evening I got to enjoy one last gorgeous sunset over the water. And then I rushed back inside to avoid being sucked dry by mosquitos.

That peaceful water is actually teeming with alligators. 

And then we got up and we left.

There was a bit of cat wrangling at first. Sputnik expressed his displeasure right away by peeing all over his crate and his brother. But we managed to get everyone and everything piled in the car.

Everything in this picture now smells faintly of pee.

Twelve long hours later, we pulled into a cat friendly motel in North Carolina. Once inside, Justin and I collapsed on the strangely ginormous-feeling full-size beds. The cats, however, were very excited to explore this new land, especially a fascinating discovery they had never seen before: carpeting.

Sputnik is high on carpet smells in this picture. 

Finally, after many audiobooks, snack stops, and bathroom breaks, we made it home to Buffalo.

Honestly, I'm glad to be back. I'm finishing up this post in my warm bed, content and confident that nothing is going suddenly start taking on water. (Assuming no more pipes burst.) This trip has been incredible, and I would like to continue on someday. And if we do, you can bet this blog is going to be the best place to read about our adventures.

But for now, I'm going enjoy my unlimited supply of hot water.

Mischief Managed. Definitely. 

tl;dr: We parked the boat and went back to Buffalo.