This is yang on ceilidh back in San Francisco Bay, specifically at Gate 11 Marina Village in Alameda. Just a few dozen feet from where Hope and I moved aboard a few short years ago.
There's a bit more to the story than coming back to earn some more money. Hope realized that she's used up her quota of cruising days. She's really missed her daughters and is currently enjoying beds that don't try to roll you out, toilets that don't double as upper body work-out machines, and stoves that don't present moving targets when you're trying to add ingredients. She flew back to the US at the end of March (she also used up her allotment of days bashing ... most friends figure she was the smart member of the crew to skip the Baja and California Bash). I left Puerto Vallarta on the 29th of March with Jay Ailworth crewing (what a friend!). The first two days out were the bash we expected, but then we started catching weather windows and for an April Bash (the time of year you're not supposed to do it), we had about the mildest Bash I've heard of except for other milder times of the year. We only had to wait a day in Ensenada, a day in San Diego, and then 4 days in Santa Barbara.
But now ceilidh is back safely tucked in her slip. We arrived around midnight Saturday the 21st of April, ending ceilidh's last voyage. Hope and I started coming north from Ecuador, slipped over to the Galapagos last November, and now back here. We figure that we've covered about 15,000 miles since setting out in September 2003.
And now she's for sale. It's time for new adventures. Don't know what those adventures are yet ... all is focused on the immediate task of getting ceilidh cleaned up and sold. And getting through the culture shock ... America seems weird now. Self-service check out. Humongous prices. Rushing around ... everyone seems to have a Type A personality. Learning to drive after 3-plus years.
Hope decided to stop cruising while the 3-plus years were still an adventure. It's been a grand adventure for both of us. Much has been learned. We've been successfully making decisions that we trusted our lives with. Didn't do that building web sites. We've met an abundance of good people throughout the world, all with hopes and dreams for their children to have better lives than they did. I don't think we'll aspire to the fancy home, status cars, combo music-video-text cell phones, dinner at all the best restaurants, and so on. But who knows today?
Thus ends the voyages of the sailing vessel ceilidh under her masters Rich and Hope. May she have many more adventures of her own. We hope to see you and catch up. Lots of catching up. Blessings and love.
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