Originally posted on cruisingrunner
A while back, a fellow cruiser advised me that out here, we don’t have “plans” we have “intentions.” That resonated with me. Coming from a schedule oriented professional background there is something about the word plan that gives changes to that plan a negative connotation. Right? If everything goes according to plan, that’s good, right? Well, it’s a rare cruiser whose plans, I mean intentions, don’t change quite frequently, and there are so many reasons why these changes happen: It could be a boat maintenance issue, weather, influences of other buddy boats, need for internet, need for fresh provisions, weather, a change in heart, or simply reality setting in regarding how quickly you can really get through a specific area or island group. We have certainly made our fair share of changes in intentions on this journey, the first one coming almost immediately after leaving home. To think back on it now, we must have been crazy. We left California at the end of February with the intent of hustling down the coast of Mexico to Central America to The Galapagos and then making a late crossing of the Pacific to The Marquesas. I’m thinking we simply didn’t understand the vastness of the miles we were intending to cover and how difficult that would have been given our lack of experience. When we got to La Paz, or more specifically, the beautiful islands in the vicinity of La Paz, we had a serious timeout moment. First of all, we had learned that the anchor we had was simply not big enough for the boat and we would need to order a new one, and who knew how long THAT would take. Second, the area was amazing with beautiful bays and snorkeling, and did we really want to rush away from the Sea of Cortez so soon? It turned out the answer was no, and after a week or so of research we decided to stay in Mexico for a full year and then make the jump to The South Pacific the following season. And even after giving ourselves so much time, we still never made it to Central America. We left to The Marquesas from Puerto Vallarta only ever making it as far south in Mexico as Tenacatita (just north of Barra de Navidad).
Currently, we are in Fiji, and we’re smack dab in the middle of totally reassessing our intentions both on micro and macro levels. On the micro level, we left Savusavu 3 weeks ago intending to tour the Lau group, starting in the south and working our way north, and then hitting an island or two on the east side of Vanua Levu before making our way down around the northwest side of Viti Levu to the Nadi area to meet up with our friends who are coming to visit us. Now we are in Fulaga (southern Lau) with four other kid boats, and we have been having a great time and have stayed much longer than we intended. So, now instead of heading north we will take a shorter route directly west, probably to the island of Matuku and then Kadavu (and the great Astrolabe reef) and then around the southwest side of Viti Levu. Of course, this is dependent on an upcoming weather window that looks like it’s deteriorating due to an intensifying front heading our way, so all of this could be different tomorrow. We may just set up permanent residence here in Fulaga.
On the macro level, we have always planned, I mean intended, to go to Australia for this next cyclone season and there we would end our journey and sell Exodus. Yeah, we’ve just chucked that plan right out the window. When we got to New Zealand last November it was a welcome change to leave the tropics and spend some time in a temperate climate with a different geographic makeup, and it also felt good to be somewhere a little more like home for awhile. But now that we are back up in the islands, we aren’t quite ready to head back to that so soon. I mean, if we go to Australia that would really only give us about 3 to 3 1/2 more months here in the tropics. Since we still want to get out of the cyclone belt during cyclone season, we are now furiously researching heading north to The Marshall Islands. We hear mixed things about it, but we also heard a lot of mixed things about staying in the Sea of Cortez for the summer, so you just never know. So, it’s really looking like Fiji to Tuvalu to Kiribati to The Marshall Islands just might shake out to be the right choice for us. Of course, we have friends heading to Vanuatu then Micronesia the The Philippines, so who knows!
But the point is, we’re not locked into anything. We are cruisers. We have intentions, not plans.
Gresham Family Exodus 