Seascape: When I’m Sixty-Four…..

Ugh! I'm really 64?

Yes, this is the year folks! 64! I woke up and looked in the mirror and saw a beautiful 24 year old – but of course I didn’t have my eyeglasses on!

It’s just so hard to believe that I’m actually sixty-four years old! It seems all my life I’ve wished to be older – when I was 16 – I wanted to be 18 so I could drink legally in New York. When I was 18 I wanted to be 21 – the magic age of independence. When I was 30 I wanted to be older and more sophisticated – and maybe drink martinis. When I was in my 50’s I wanted to be 62 and retire from all the hoopla of the rat race. Even now – I’m looking forward to NEXT year when I no longer have to spend half the entire cruising budget on health care! I will qualify for Medicare!

…But then I realize I’m in the last semester of my life and maybe I should start taking this trip seriously. Maybe I should stop wishing and start doing. And so here I am….finding myself on a little ship floating through the Caribbean with the man of my dreams and the colors of the rainbow and the smells of the jungle and the feel of the trade winds touching my skin and blowing my hair and freeing my soul.

I have so many wonderful memories of this life – my childhood family – my marriage family – my schooling and higher education – my work career – my loves – my lusts – my passions. I am no different than you – with hopes and dreams and fumbles and foibles. But these memories of our travels here – in these beautiful turquoise waters – have been some of the best so far.

Leaving Longboat Key dock

Those of you who have kept up with our blogs know something about our experiences. We started in Sarasota Florida – said good-bye to our wonderful friends and family and cruised off to a life unknown, on foreign lands and strange customs. And it’s been wonderful and freeing and scary and intimidating and easy and difficult, and everything in between. We had a goal of reaching the southernmost end of the Caribbean chain of islands – to Trinidad – 2157 nautical miles from the start – to take a “rest” and harbor our little ship and ourselves from the potential trauma of hurricane season.

We’ve been here in Chaguaramus, Trinidad since August 27^th and plan to restart the trip north by mid November. Below is a small photographic retrospective of our voyage to date. When I look at the hundreds of pictures I have taken since starting this voyage, I can only smile with my heart. I feel truly blessed to have the luxury of time and serendipity to experience this beauty at our own pace and in our own parameters. Cheers to another decade or three of this wonderful and mysterious life!