It’s been a month since we initially expected to leave Hawai’i. Fortunately, this delay has given us time to embrace a well-known cruising mantra: “Plans are written in the sand, at low tide.” Reflecting on the causes of our delay underscores the importance of practicing patience while cruising.
Patience isn’t just a virtue; it’s a cruising muscle we should learn and exercise. Without it, you risk costly mistakes. Fail to be patient as a boat-shopper, and risk owning a boat that has unanticipated added cost or complexity. Fail to be patient as an active cruiser, waiting for a weather window, and pay the price in comfort or safety. A lack of patience can transform a valuable learning experience into one that derails a cruising dream entirely. The ability of a crew to handle the pressure to be impatient is often a deciding factor in a successful cruising journey.
True Trials
As part of our coaching services, we provide weather guidance, and recent months have offered ample opportunities for cruisers to exercise patience.
Earlier this year, the crew of Mug Up waited six weeks in Saint Martin before weather conditions aligned for their voyage to Bermuda. By the time they were ready to depart for the Azores, mechanical issues caused another monthlong delay. The late-season timing made them question whether to continue east at all.
Meanwhile, in the South Pacific, crews working with us were pinned down in French Polynesia’s western atolls. These stops, originally planned as brief respites, turned into three- and four-week stays due to volatile weather south of the South Pacific Convergence Zone—waiting for a reasonable sea state to exit a lagoon through a skinny, shallow pass and a gale-free passage west.
Jennifer Hyer, aboard Terikah, reflected on the shift in mindset that helped her crew:
“For us, once the decision was made that we should stay longer, it took away the daily anxiety of trying to decide. Acceptance of our current reality allowed us to relax into it and see it as an opportunity to catch up on boat chores, school, walks on the beach, and really digging into a place. Slowing down has allowed us to make meaningful connections with the local people and their way of life. I think it’s all about accepting the present moment as our current reality, not trying to fight it or change it.”
Those connections included assisting a local family with repairs to their copra shed and helping shuttle goods between islands. The Hyers’ ability to adapt transformed their delay into a deeply rewarding experience.
Aboard Mug Up, Jillian Greenawalt reflects on the challenge of maintaining a state of readiness to depart along with a normal pace of everyday life between boat projects, homeschooling and fun: “We definitely questioned whether or not we were making things too hard, or if we should reconsider our plans. But remembering our bigger goals, and why, was helpful to staying on course.”
The key, for the Mug Up crew, was making sure they took time out to have fun, instead of getting pulled into work and boat projects.
What both of these crews are doing reminds me a lot of our guidance to have a happiness engineer on board: not getting so caught up in boat-work pressure that they don’t take time to enjoy where they are. Easy to say, difficult to do. But patience pays off: Despite long waits for late-season passages, Mug Up is currently enjoying the Azores before their upcoming shorter hop to Europe.
When Patience Runs Thin
We’ve also witnessed what happens when patience falters. One crew, pressured by a crewmember’s urgency, departed against advice. They hoped for the best (believing the worst wouldn’t be that bad) but faced the worst—an aborted passage that ended their cruising dream.
Sometimes, waiting for weather is a case of picking the best of a poor set of options. Watching and overanalyzing forecasts in New Caledonia, we were late in the season for the last leg to Australia. Leaving on the heels of a gale, with 40 knots pushing Totem southwest, was choosing the best of the worst for that passage—and the job waiting for me in Sydney.
Six years later, we sat in Bermuda studying forecasts, faced with a similar situation. There was a fixed date on our calendar to present at the SSCA’s gam in Essex, Connecticut. We’ll tell anyone who listens that the word “schedule” should be eliminated from a cruiser’s vocabulary, but we fell victimto our own advice and left with what we wanted to convince ourselves was going to be “boisterous, but fine.” And the outcome may have been fine, but we surely could have done without the near-fire (when water ingress shorted a solar panel controller), the broken stanchion, and the lost kayak.
The Current Challenge
As I write, patience is again being tested. We initially planned to leave Hawai’i in late July, but then, my father announced he was visiting. Hooray! No patience needed there; we had a great week with my dad.
We drove around the island, revisiting haunts he and my mother used to visit, making memories with the relatives here.
After Dad flew out, Jamie and I decided to give ourselves a week and spend our wedding anniversary here instead of at sea. This also allowed me to continue my earnest research into the best Mai Tais on the tourist coast of Kona, a mission I’m taking seriously.
And then, on our anniversary, the eastern Pacific looked like this:
And so, we waited a little longer (slightly more patience required now). Our hope was to visit Kiribati before heading north to the Majuro, Marshall Islands, from where we would fly to the Annapolis Boat Show to teach again at Cruisers University. That buffer of time was fading.
The systems passed and faded, and we again neared our departure, making our final rounds with the rental car: one last night with cousins (wow, they put on a feast), one last provisioning stop at Costco, one last farmer’s market visit for freshies. Really the only test of patience we had was when a US Customs official initially refused to process our clearance paperwork because “the Marshall Islands are a US territory; you don’t need this.” (Fact: The Marshall Islands are an independent republic with a compact of free association with the USA, and I very much did need that outbound clearance from CBP).
And then, Jamie had a sciatica onset. (He first had short-lived sciatica pain about 20 years ago.) It brings bouts of writhing pain and creates a big sleep deficit. There would be no option of departing until that resolved. Meanwhile, weather continued to be significantly more active than expected in the Eastern Pacific. As I write, hurricane Hone has just passed below Totem, a Category 1 grazing the south side of the big island of Hawai’i. Behind it? Another hurricane (Gilma) and a tropical storm that may become yet another hurricane (Hector), and additional disturbances that seem like they may want to spin. Oh boy!
We won’t get to visit Kiribati now. Disappointing? Of course—not to mention an opening for pangs of impatience. But we also know how miserable it could be if we didn’t take the time needed. Still, it’s a dance: Patience shouldn’t be an excuse to delay indefinitely, either. The boat will never be perfect. The “unicorn” passage is rare. Be patient to pass on a “dragon” passage, or be prepared to fight for it. But most of all, have no regrets.
