October 20, 2010
If you have found this little corner of cyber space you may know that today the final calls of a captain and crew were sung out. The journey of the Red Thread is finished.
This morning we raised all of our courtesy flags (all 44 of them) to signify and show off the places this boat has been. But aside from actually docking the boat, it is the last act of our journey, thus completing a trip around two oceans and 38,032 nautical miles sailed.
In 2006, we spent months preparing a boat in hopes of finding extraordinary places and being self sufficient. Ironically, our quest for remote anchorages would also enlighten us to the importance that people make in the experiences of our lives.
Tourists visit, but travelers immerse. By staying well off the typical routes, we were fortunate to move down the continuum and discover amazing things by becoming travelers. It was the people we met in these very remote places that left their mark on us. These marks make us look like an old bar stool. The kind with lots of flaws, but so comfortable. How great to know we have these opportunities to change ourselves and others, even if it's just a little bit. Like our flags, each mark tells a story of someone somewhere who stepped out to make our lives and our journey better.
The lack of regret - never again will we have to read books about sailing to the far reaches of the world or wonder such things as what is Pitcairn like. We went one step further; we got to know Mrs. Christian! Without her it's just a small place on the 25th parallel.
The world is 70% water and people often ask about finding yourself on the great big blue. That would require you wanted to find something or someone. Maybe you would need to be lost. There are countless entries of those who say they find God out on the sea and that may be true. But one thing for us is certain, there is no doubt about the existence of angels on Earth. Just the name Benjamin can bring tears to the captain's eyes.
A sailing trip is also about sailing and in 2009 we bounced back from our "unplanned stop" and anchored (successfully) 262 days, sailed 81 overnight passages and only pulled up to a dock 22 times. The passages as hard and long as they were, will be missed. The psychotic episodes that would follow, the ones where voices and thoughts bang around in your head at times that would generate incoherent mumblings. These mumblings often about the most uninteresting things would find themselves beaming around the world in the form of emails that would make many say, 'what the hell is he talking about?'
The Red Thread was about two little girls. Being directed to this page means one of two things:
1. You know them or
2. We owe you money
The new address or our exact location won't be put up so that just leaves the first group and that means you know Linzi and MeiLing. It also means that you are part of this beautiful tapestry we wove.
No matter the circumstances Linzi and MeiLing are put in, be it twenty day passages or three months of volunteer work in China, they always leave people happier than before they arrived. Maybe it is knowing where they came from and seeing where they are. Whatever it is, the smiles, good feelings generated and warm thoughts left behind have been endless.
Growth isn't where you are, but how far you've come and no one holds a candle to these two. They have answered the one question we all ponder: "Is the world better off because of me?"
Now, it's time to share them with more people, which will be hard for their parents. We take solace, after nearly five years of just the four of us living together in an over sized piece of tupperware, that the proverb has been realized. The threads have shortened and whether it be destiny or 'universe juice', we believe we were meant to be together. Imagine what the cost would have been if we hadn't gone this way.
