Well, we did it.

After four (4!) years of prep and fret, we finally untied our Bay Area lines.

Boat prep? Check. Myriad friends and family rendezvous and final pickleball games with my favorite peeps? Check. Mail forwarding service and new boat cards? New cockpit cushions and purple crocodile interior mast cover? Frantic Amazon purchases, mani/pedi/brows/lashes/haircut? Check check and check. You get the drift. … and can perhaps sense the potentially misplaced priorities of this author and first mate. 

Whatevs. Don’t judge. The point is that we were both as ready as we were going to be, T had wisely both reserved our slip in Ventura for August 26 and booked our September trip to Greece out of LAX … which meant we had to get outta dodge. So we packed the farewell care package that my mom had assembled (complete with my favorite foods and a tear-inducing pile of cards), and we sailed out of Marina Village Yacht Harbor for the last time.

Everything was such a whirlwind: turning in our keys, picking up my mom and giving her our car, leaving her on the dock with her equally sad and brave visage hidden by suspiciously large sunglasses … And then we were off. This was the moment we had dreamed of for years, and it was actually happening. Totally surreal. Our first leg was seven hours — all motorsailing — to Half Moon Bay, My sister-in-law/partner in crime/pickleball partner Jude visited and we all indulged in fat sandwiches, freshly grilled sardines, and my famously stiff double vodka tonics. We rested for a day and them headed to Monterey, where the whales ruled the seas (and while cool and all, were a little too copious and a lot too close to our boat for comfort) while the sea lions ruled the docks with their loud braying, shameless lazing, and super intense funk.