The following was written in the beginning of January when we were
still in Mag Bay and didn’t have internet. We just realized that we hadn’t
posted it yet and so most people don’t know how drastically our plans have
changed.
You can’t control the wind, but you can adjust your sails. - Don’t know who originally said this, but a
good friend of ours wrote it on our life ring and I happened across it the
other day when I needed the reminder.
Sorry we have been out of touch for so long. We have been
anchored off a small (240 people) fishing village for several weeks waiting for
wind and didn’t have any access to internet or phone. Most recently we thought
we would have been on the mainland a month ago but delays down the coast have
added up to us being way behind where we thought we would be right now.
The upside of being in one place for so long is that we got
to meet and get to know some really great people without the distraction of a
town or city. The most important thing is that it gave us time to think and
discuss our plans. We realized that by pushing to meet the schedule we had set
for ourselves that we have been stressing ourselves out, not fully enjoying the
adventure and worst of all taking it out on each other.
After some serious soul
searching we found there were 3 main reasons we were pushing to meet the
schedule. First, we didn’t think we were very interested in spending much time
in Central America and especially Mexico – we could easily do that by van or
backpacking someday when we are land-based again. Second, sticking to the plan
of saving and prepping got us here so sticking to the plan is good, right? The
third took some deeper digging but we finally realized the ugly truth - the
schedule was also based on fear. 
A fear that went something like this, “We only
have so much in savings, so we need to
keep moving or we might run out of money before we get to the South Pacific and
not be able to go.”
Fear is a tricky creature. Ignored and pushed into dark
corners it grows like mold, spreading its network of spores into the folds of our
souls.
Bringing our fear out into the light allowed us to look at it from
different angles and discuss how living from within the fear made us stressed
out, cranky with one another and defeated all our hard work over the past 5
years. After all, we scrimped and saved so we could have the freedom to do what
we want and not have to work, but sticking to the schedule was feeling a lot
more like work than freedom. 
The last few weeks at Puerto Magdelena have given
us the time to really think this over, discuss and open ourselves to the option
of slowing down and postponing the crossing to the South Pacific for a year.
Within days of voicing this as a possibility, we found it slipping into our
conversations as if it were a done deal, then, correcting ourselves to say
“maybe”. But each time we mentioned slowing down there was a relaxation, ease
and joy returning that had been crowded out in our efforts to meet ‘the
schedule’. We haven’t reached the mainland yet, so who knows if we will want to
spend extra time there. We will make the decision after we check it out. Either
way, we can rest easy knowing that like Gratitouille’s sails, the sails of our
souls are adjustable.
Back to present day. It’s funny, shortly after we got to the
mainland and some internet, we got notifications from the blogs of friends that
they had posted stories of slowing down around the same time we wrote this.
We have since reached the mainland of course, and are
enjoying it thoroughly. We are definitely not going to Easter Island this year
as there is just too much that we still want to see on this coast and merely
moving quickly enough to stay ahead of hurricane season feels plenty fast. We
are also enjoying giving ourselves the grace of a year to get settled into this
new lifestyle we have taken on before we go on such a big journey.
One of our Mag Bay friends taught us to have ‘intentions’ of
doing things rather than raising the ire of Mother Nature/Neptune by being so
brash as to make ‘plans’. So our current intent is to continue down the coast
of Mexico and Central America with a few months in El Salvador (“the new Costa
Rica”) during hurricane season to work on boat projects, surf and possibly do
some inland bus trips. We would like to visit Honduras, Nicaragua, the Las
Perlas islands of Panama and possibly Ecuador after El Salvador (not necessarily
in that order). We are thinking we will make the big jump to Easter Island
about a year from now (maybe earlier) and on to the South Pacific islands from
there. Who knows what will actually happen. The one thing we do know is that if
you have plans (or intentions) of meeting us along the way, we'd love to see you. After all, our sails are adjustable.
Love,
Jodi and Darren
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