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You are welcome to apply any part of this article to your own personal use. Please do NOT publish any part of the article or apply any part of it to any non-personal use without the express written concent of the author.
Talking to our friends and family about our recent 16-month cruise around the perimeter of the Caribbean Sea, they all seem very curious about how we’re readapting to the ‘real’ world. They subscribe to the romantic notion that life in the tropics is much more laid back than here at home. "Yes, " I’d respond to their queries, keeping the romance of cruising alive for them. "It’s not an easy adjustment to make, and I’m not liking it. But I’m getting used to it." Then a friend asked the very same question, but much more pointedly. How has the trip impacted us? How have we changed? Until it was asked in that way, it hadn’t occurred to me that the readjustment process was required because I had changed while I was ‘out there’ and not because anything had changed in the ‘real’ world while I was gone.
There’s a phenomenon that seems happen to cruisers who have been ‘out there’ for somewhere around a year. It’s something that occurs that represents the difference between going cruising and being a cruiser. It’s very subtle, yet very profound. And it is very difficult to put into words. The best I can do is to oversimplify it and identify it as a shift in attitude, the shift from being on a cruise to being a cruiser.
Sometimes the shift happens when they’ve been ‘out there’ for as little as six months. Sometimes it takes a year and a half, or even more. Regardless of when it happens, if the cruisers make it through that point they generally end up doing what they can to keep on cruising. And if they ever stop, something is very, very different when they come back. A very few, when they stop cruising, never really come back at all. Instead they settle in some unhurried corner of the globe where they carve out a niche for themselves and live quite happily.
Not every cruiser makes it through that point. Perhaps they just miss the comfortable feeling of knowing where they’ll be and what they will be doing tomorrow, or next week, or next year. A workaholic might miss the pressures of the job. The more social might miss their families and friends. Maybe the couple just didn’t know at the onset what it would be like to live with each other in such close quarters day in and day out. Or maybe one of the them just gets seasick and is miserable anytime they’re not at a dock. For whatever reason they don’t make it through that point, they return to the ‘real’ world to tell their friends how their dream-of-a-lifetime cruise just didn’t turn out the way they wanted.
For a few, the phenomenon happens as a personal epiphany, perhaps after bringing their boat safely into port after experiencing severe weather. For others, somewhere along the line they realize that it’s happened to them too. For still others, it may have already happened to them but the change is so subtle that they haven’t yet realized that something’s different.
How did my wife, Kit Hitchcock, and I fare?
Over the years Kit and I have taken a number cruises lasting anywhere from a week to a month or so. A few years ago we were ‘out there’ for a full six months cruising the Bahamas, but that wasn’t long enough for it to catch either of us. Our Caribbean trip was our first that was long enough. I made a promise to myself to begin watching for that shift in myself and in my wife as we approached the one-year mark in our time ‘out there’. I was curious. Would that shift happen to us as well? Would I be one of those who returned disappointed?
I began to see a distinct change in Kit in a number of areas. Most apparent was a change in her confidence in herself as an individual, in me as her captain and in the two of us as a partnership. In the beginning of the cruise she was very anxious about any passage where we’d be more than a few hours away from some port of refuge or some outside assistance should something go wrong. But by the time we were on passage from Curaçao to Cartagena, something was definitely different. We were in gale conditions for several days, yet Kit was quite matter-of-fact about it and did not evidence any dread about our situation. "You know," she said to me a few months later when we were in the San Blas Islands of Panama, "the Canal is so close. It would be so easy to forget about the rest of our current plan, slip through the Canal, and keep on going..." Yes, I’d say it definitely has happened to Kit.
But as hard as I looked, I didn’t see any change in me.
Until we returned to the ‘real’ world. We’re currently living aboard at a dock not far from our former one. I am again moving through familiar landscapes, seeing familiar people and getting involved in familiar activities. It’s only with those familiar surroundings that I have been able to distinguish a difference in my own attitudes. I am seeing things newly, as if I have been given a new pair of eyes.
In one aspect of that difference, I can now see how I became attuned to the cycles of nature, such as the phases of the moon and the wonderful differences between the nighttime skies as the Earth moves through its annual orbit. I knew, even without looking up, the moon’s phase and how many days until the next quarter. Now, at the end of a long work day, I now have to make a concerted effort to check out the phase of the moon and can only guess when she will be full. And forget about being attuned to the stars. The city lights obliterate all but the very brightest. I really miss those connections.
And there are other things I find I’m missing. Simple things. Swinging at anchor. Walking along a deserted beach. An unexpected encounter with an old friend in some out-of-the-way place. Snorkeling for a fish dinner. Sunset ceremonies in the cockpit.
As for my profession, something is different there too. It used to mean something to me that I was very good at what I did, but I still needed constant acknowledgment of that from my clients and peers. I still want to do the job well and strive to do it right the first time. But now, it’s satisfying to just do the job the very best that I can and that the client is pleased with the result. Additional kudos are appreciated when they happen to come along. It’s just that I no longer hunt for them.
So what is this ‘real’ world that I’ve returned to? With my shift in attitude, it has become just another one of the myriad exotic regions of the planet with its own foibles, features and fascinations to explore. In that respect, it’s really no more difficult to adjust to being here than to adjust to being in any of the other places we’ve visited. With this new perspective it has become an exciting place to explore and discover, in spite of its familiarity. And I look forward to seeing even more while we’re here.
Yes, something has happened to me, something I could only discern once I was back in the ‘real’ world, something subtle yet profound. I’m not a guy who’s taken some time off and gone cruising. I have become a cruiser.
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