Home Again

Posted by John

We arrived home with a bit of apprehension. In a rental car we had just picked up, Robyn and I drove up the road to our house cautiously, not sure how we’d feel. Neither of us had been home for two years. Our house sitters had been living in the house since we moved onto the boat in June, 2016. Driving up to the house felt familiar and, in some ways, like we’d never left, but also, oddly, like it was someone else’s home and we were intruding. As we pulled up the driveway we were greeted by a playful dog, and immediately noticed a few changes: the greenhouse; parking space for more cars; a larger chicken enclosure. Things that weren’t ours.

We wanted to go inside, but then again, we didn’t. I had been thinking about our house occasionally for the last few months. It had taken us five years of working weekends to build it. I wasn’t ready to go inside and have my memory of it altered by reality just yet.

We made face-to-face contact with Jeremy in the driveway. They were still in the process of moving out, and still looking for a more permanent place to live, but planned to be out of our house by dark. At least they knew we were back. That should be good enough until Julie got home with the bags. Robyn and I got back in the car and drove away again. Baby steps.

After flying from Fiji to Hawaii, and then Honolulu to Seattle, arriving late in the evening, we had spent the first night back in Seattle at an airport hotel. In the morning, Julie stayed with all of our bags at the hotel and waited for a prearranged ride home late in the afternoon. We knew that everything and all of us would not fit in the small car, so Robyn and I took the light rail to downtown Seattle, then walked onto the Washington State Ferry to Bainbridge, then took a Kitsap Transit bus to Poulsbo, and then walked a mile to the rental car office.

On the light rail from the airport, the woman sitting next to us noticed the little backpack I was carrying. It was a handout from the Baja Ha-Ha, with the rally logo printed on it. The woman asked if we had done the Ha-Ha. I said we were just getting home, even though we had actually done it two years before. We explained how our boat was stuck in Fiji, but our original plan had been to sail home through Tahiti and Hawaii. She said it was a tough year to sail from Hawaii, and pulled out her smart phone and brought up Windy.com, showing headwinds between Hawaii and Seattle. She pointed out a tight patch of high wind and low pressure near Mexico, and predicted that it could turn into something nasty. It later became hurricane Hector, heading toward Hawaii. We had never met this woman before, yet the conversation seemed everyday normal as if even random public transit riders maintain immediate access to ocean weather predictions and understand the sailing routes from Hawaii.

On our last day in Fiji I had awakened to the delayed realization that it really was our final day. We still had to pack and finish preparing the boat. In addition to the few bags we had that we could use as travel luggage, Terrapin had previously given us a large duffle bag that they no longer needed, and Julie made three more duffle bags from old sail material given to us by Mezzaluna, and some leftover Sunbrella material from our other projects. Handles were made out of bright yellow webbing. One thing for sure, our bags would be easy to spot at the airport baggage claim.

Our taxi driver was eager to get us to the airport, but we were ready early enough that he was willing to wait while we had a last lunch with Mezzaluna and Enough. By the time the Sunday afternoon live music would be starting, we couldn’t stay any longer. Suddenly, it seemed strange to even contemplate being home soon. We helped the driver load our bags.

Now back at our house on Monday evening, there wasn’t much there. It was mostly empty. It took a while to remember which switch turned on which lights. There were so many of them. We went out to the store and bought a new coffee maker and a package of coffee. Then we bought new pillows and three new blankets. We drove home again, exhausted by this point, and spent the night sleeping on three couches. Other than the dining room table, they were the only real furniture still in the house.

After carefully setting up our bank accounts, mail handling, bill paying and credit cards before we left on the boat (it had actually taken more than a year to get all the bugs worked out), now everything was once again all screwed up. We had been locked out of some accounts, having unwittingly triggered anti-fraud measures on accounts that had been working fine up until recently. It took more than a week just to reactivate our home phone number. We had to find a car. We had to find kitchen utensils, plates, cups; we had to buy more clothes, needing fewer T-shirts and shorts, and more pants and socks(!). Every day we find surprises that we had packed away in storage and forgotten, but also wonder if, maybe, we actually got rid of some of the things we’ve been looking for but haven’t yet found. Things had been pretty hectic just before we moved onto the boat two years ago.

We have a lengthening list of maintenance tasks around the house, from a dishwasher that doesn’t work right, to several burned out lights, to a vacuum cleaner that won’t suck, to a riding mower that does. We’ve been told that it couldn’t be started the whole time we were gone. We brought home boat parts and measurements, sketches and ideas for several projects and repairs. We have to make contact again with the marina and find out what happened to our highly recommended “boat minder” we arranged with to take care of the boat. We need to find insurance that will actually cover the boat while it’s in the pit during the cyclone season, since our current carrier informed us the day before we left Fiji that they wouldn’t be able to. We have to remember that we need to once again carry around a bunch of keys, and try not to lock ourselves out of the house. Plus, we have a kid to get off to school, and need to plan for more time away from home next year.

So, with that, we’ll get on with life for the next several months. We may make occasional blog posts through the winter if there is something appropriate to mention. Otherwise, we go back to Fiji in March. I’m sure there will be something to write about then.

In the meantime, here’s how we last remember our boat.