Energy Ebbs

After Becca caught her flight home, we no longer had any pressing schedule to keep.  For a time, life aboard Strolla returned to the laid back rhythm of the wind and the waves.  We settled into a new crew dynamic of three instead of four.  We quickly grew accustomed to the extra elbow room from one less body aboard.  Mark and I magnanimously allowed Nate to remain in the two person forward cabin alone.  He and Becca had slept there every night since first arriving in Ft. Lauderdale in November.  It was their den, their nest, and their musk permeated every inch of it.  We were content sleeping most nights on deck instead of our hot and cramped quarter berths anyway.  But, Becca's departure from the crew marked a turning point in the trip.  The transition that had steadily been taking shape in our minds had now become literal.  It was the beginning of the end.   

 

(Pirate necklace)

 

We continued our voyage south somewhat less energetically than before.  Our zest for exploration had been ebbing in pace with our bank account balances and all were almost spent.  We no longer felt the urgent rush to see beyond the next horizon or the eager anticipation of reaching the next port.  Ports were expensive.  Working in and out of mooring fields, setting and hauling up anchor by hand, was hard work.  

After so many months beating our way east, the wind was finally doing the work for us.  Best to keep it that way.  We started making longer hops between islands.  We had time to think.  We thought mostly about what would come next, after our time riding the ocean swells was over.  Future plans stopped being about what course to chart, which islands to call at, or where to reprovision.  We each planned our own escapes from the trip.  

Like Becca, Nate and Mark were returning to summer seasonal jobs at Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park.  The season there didn't start until mid-May, leaving a little more than two months to mooch off parents, catch up with friends, and generally reconnect with the land-locked lives they'd left behind. 

I had other ideas.  The girlfriend I'd made in Jackson Hole and visited from Puerto Rico was in still living in Breckenridge, Colorado.  I would briefly return home to my parents in New Hampshire, collect my car from my brother who had been "taking care of it", and drive out to join her.  First though, I had to figure out what to do with Strolla.  As captain and sole owner, this responsibility fell to me alone and I now began to feel it keenly.  Leaving Strolla at Laila's house in Ft. Lauderdale was not an option this time around as it had been the previous winter.  I figured I could either sell her or store her but either way, it would have to happen soon. Mark and Nate had both voiced their determination to leave in the coming weeks and I was not interested in continuing on alone.  Stress began to build.

During this time of waning enthusiasm and concern for the future, there was one event looming on the horizon that kept our bow pointed south and the barnacles from our hull.  Carnival.  It was at the end of February and the countdown to Marti Gras had already begun.  We had talked about it in hushed and reverent tones for some weeks now, the idea of being somewhere big for Fat Tuesday but, the choices were few, far between, and difficult to plan for.  As we pressed on, one city presented itself as more and more within our reach, Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad.