It is difficult to describe the feeling of Euphoria you get when you have finished setting your anchor after a 22-day ocean crossing. The boat is still and peaceful. There are no watches to stand. There are other people around. You feel relief. You feel a sense of accomplishment. You feel happy. The closest thing I can compare it to is finishing a long-distance race that had a particularly grueling last couple of miles, but you still managed to PR. Oh, and the race had to be in some exotic location, and you got to stay and explore afterwards. Surprisingly, we weren’t in a hurry to get off the boat. We were just happy to be there. We opened a bottle of 2000 Spanish red wine we had been hauling around for a while, and the boys got to drink sodas for their “safe arrival cocktails.” We made snacks and hung out in our cockpit all afternoon as others from the anchorage came by to say hi and welcome us. (No one brought us baguettes, though.)
People say that you can smell the land as you get close. I tried, and I didn’t notice much of a difference, but as we were entering the anchorage Brenden, who has a much more acute sense of smell than I do said, “it smells sweet like pollen.”
Gresham Family Exodus 