No matter how hard we tried, it was impossible to see everyone we love in the Outer Banks. After the first few days, we adopted a new policy of seeing only those we ran into naturally, a plan that slowed the pace and somehow made the reunions even richer.
The joyful reunions started with our kids, who are in the Outer Banks for the summer. We had last seen Dylan in Miami in January, Casey in the Exumas in February. Soon it will be harder to get us all in the same locale. We, of course, are constantly on the move. Dylan will go back to Raleigh and North Carolina State. Casey (we hope) will be going to Paris to start her master's degree in French.
Our circle complete: now our son Dylan drives us around.
Our home waters were graced with a visit from two of our cruising friends. Dale and Karen on Jessie Marie, and Christie and Matt on Kaleo followed us to Manteo where we became tour guides, doing the tourist things we would have never done otherwise -- and enjoying them.
Pre-theater cocktails with Dale and Karen, Matt and Christie.
One of those tourist attractions is the outdoor drama, The Lost Colony, about the first English settlement in North America in the late 1500s. As you might garner from the title, it does not have a happy ending. The English ships bringing supplies to the colonists were waylaid by the Anglo-Spanish War, and when they turned up three years later, the colonists were gone. Not dead, just gone. Missing -- a mystery still.
Cruisers found at the Lost Colony.
Baseball!
It is with much sadness and total exhaustion that we leave Manteo tomorrow, but we have an appointment with The Ship's Tailor in Deltaville, Virginia, to replace Cara Mia's canvas, the beginning of giving back to this boat that has given us so much in the last year.
Duane and June, blog readers and soon-to-be cruisers,
accosted us on the docks -- and bought us lunch!
"Manteo Waterfront Marina, Manteo Waterfront Marina, this is Cara Mia."
Even though we only traversed a well-worn path to the Bahamas and back, it feels like we're returning from a far-flung expedition, maybe even a circumnavigation.
"It looks small," Chip said, not in a gloating, I'm-so-big-now sort of way, but more from our habits of traveling 50+ miles per day. These shores, the Outer Banks and Roanoke Island, seem so close together now.
We pulled into the exact slip we left 8 months and 8 days ago, and into the arms of those waiting on shore.
So many people to see. So many stories to tell. Where do we start?
Typically I would not endorse starting a blog with weeping, but in this case I'll have to make an exception.
At 6:40 this morning, we untied the lines and slowly pulled out of our home slip in Manteo, and that's when I started tearing up.
The waning moon got up early to see us off, and just as we headed under the Manteo causeway bridge, like some sort of weird portal, we entered the dawn of our new world.
In a continued stroke of our lives as a Hallmark movie, the moon and a big, corny piece of my heart stayed behind in Manteo.
And that's when the real weeping began, not in an austere, Ingrid Bergman sort of way, but more of a Meg Ryan, messy, he-just-didn't-want-to-marry-ME sort of way.
My wracking sobs were bubbling up from a deep bilge full of emotions: relief, sadness, nostalgia, excitement, profound joy and even a little fear laced heavily with exhaustion.
Last night, the seemingly unshakeable grip of the land had us pinned to the ground, right up to the midnight hour. As we were entering our route in the new GPS, it didn't respond like the manual said it should, not allowing us to save our route, perpetually, repeatedly. One time I zoomed in and the entire screen filled with capital A's and foreign symbols.
After four straight hours of repeatedly entering the waypoints (a lot of them), rebooting, cursing and questioning the premise of our entire future, the GPS warmed to us and faultlessly saved the route.
This morning we left Manteo on four hours of sleep, nervous, fidgety and lacking faith in ourselves and the GPS. Chip and the GPS performed flawlessly. I sat on the life jackets and wept.
I'm sitting here thinking how that seems an inauspicious way to begin our new life, but come to think of it, I guess that's how all new lives begin: pop out of the womb into a new world and then start wailing. All I did was add safety equipment.
When we turn 50, the life fairy puts an amazing gift under our pillows: the better half of life. It's ours to embrace, to relish, to indulge, to exploit, to love.
