Sitting with Uncertainty

I’m a planner. An implementer. Give me a project or a destination, and I kick into high gear. But ask me to dream up a grand vision or hand me a blank tile in Scrabble, and I freeze up. Stupid, but that’s the way it is. Conor is much stronger at the latter, which is likely one reason we make a good team.

If there’s one thing that cruising life teaches you, it’s that you have to go with the flow and often sit with uncertainty. 2025 is the year of major uncertainty for us (for many people, likely). Rather than having our next sailing season identified and mapped out, our heading has been changing weekly, if not daily sometimes. 

Truth be told, we’ve had Sabática listed for sale. We’ve gone back and forth on “Do we sell? Do we not?” We had mental plans to return to the US this spring. (Where to is a whole other rabbit hole.) Rory graduates from university this June, and his future plans and needs are still unknown. Then it was looking pretty unlikely that the boat would sell before June. If we still have a boat, why not sail another season? So, we made contingency plans to allow that to happen given we have to find places to park the boat in early June and early July where we need to be in other countries for family events. Then a new administration took over in the US, and things have gone haywire. Maybe we should be back home in solidarity and see if we can do anything to help situations that need it. Another theme we have attached to 2025 is “Nobody knows…!”

We are still spinning in those circles, but one thing we know for certain is that we have to get Sabática out of the EU before March 26th. That’s when our 18 months in the EU is up as it relates to VAT being paid on her. It’s extremely unfortunate that we are seeing unusually nasty weather here in southern Spain for this time of year. It was decided today, though, that we have to leave tomorrow. How’s that for planning?! We have a two-day weather window to make some progress towards Gibraltar, our end destination before March 26th. We have an idea where we’d like to end up to wait out more nasty weather for a week. But, who knows? Nobody knows. We shall see. 😉

So yeah, we’ve been sitting with a lot of uncertainty so far this year and have been doing ok with it, surprisingly. You go about your normal day with exercise, work, errands, movies, whatever. Sometimes it can drive you a bit nutty, but if you trust in the idea that things will work out, they will. You go day by day. Beyond that, nobody knows! Stay tuned…