We’ve been living on board Salty for past 2.5 years, we’ve had highs and lows living our adventure. In this short time we have sailed roughly 18,000 nautical miles, now I’m not a seasoned sailor but hooly dooly that’s a lot of miles. We’ve sailed the Bahamas, New England, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Caribbean, Greenland, the Northwest Passage and Alaska – in that order.

I’m not ashamed to say that we’re tired. Tired of the constant moving. Tired of not seeing friends. Tired of planning meals around the weather conditions. And tired of not having a toddler friendly backyard. Don’t get me wrong, the beach and sea are great for young kids but you always have to be on your toes when it comes to kids under 5 and the water. Crew is not yet 2 years old and into EVERYTHING, we find that one of us has to be within 2 feet of him at all times. It’s exhausting.

So it’s come to this. We are dreaming of some land. Land in which we can open our back door and let the kids discover without constant adult supervision. I know there are still dangers outside for them but nothing like living on a boat, one ear always open for that dreaded scream and splash of one of our mini me’s falling overboard. The kids want bikes, pets and friends. Hell I want a bike too!

Are we buying a house and becoming landlubbers? Not yet, but we are at a turning point in our travels. Like many cruisers we have exhausted our funds, our cruising kitty is sick.

We have some big decisions to make that not only affect us but our kids and extended family. We are living a life in limbo.

We’ve been exploring Maine and checking out properties to see if it would be something that would fit our family, our whole family…. including Salty. In this plan I would head up to Maine with the kids and the Beaver, Carl would fly back to Alaska and prep the boat to take her back through the Northwest Passage. Salty would be flipped from a family friendly boat to an adventurous high latitudes charter boat.

In the coming weeks we will need to make a firm decision of land or sea. We could always head back to Alaska and hope that Carl could land a job for the summer then head south at the start of winter, but finding temporary employment doesn’t bring in big bucks for future sailing plans. How do people sail and support a family of 5? Can it be done?

Another idea is to head back to Alaska straight away and cruise south aiming for a Pacific crossing come April 2016 but this would have us sailing in rough winter seas landing us in Australia dead broke, if we even make it that far.

Ahh the sleepless nights of tossing and turning thinking about the future. I’m sure there are other cruisers out there that struggle with the same emotions as we are. We love sailing and traveling but we keep coming back to: is this the right time for us? Maybe if we give it another couple of years, wait for Crew to be 4 and give the live aboard thing another go. But we have the boat NOW, will we be shooting ourselves in the foot in a years time?

we have met the enemy and he is us – Walt Kelly

If anyone has some slick ideas about how we can keep cruising and afford to buy a sensible amount of chocolate along the way please let us known. As for now we’re looking outside of the the box but not yet giving up the dream.