Sunshine to start, then a few afternoon clouds. High 64F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Clear skies. Low around 45F. Winds light and variable.

I’ve been standing at the helm of our sailboat squinting at the ocean ahead of us for the last hour and a half, trying my best to zig zag and weave among the kaleidoscopic field of striped, bobbing buoys that dot the water like a spattering of spilled confetti. We do not want to hit these buoys — each one is firmly tethered to a lobster trap on the ocean floor some 225 feet below us via a sturdy line that we’d like to avoid getting fouled in our prop. We are sailing on the coast of Maine on a starboard tack, about 12 miles from Port Clyde. Two of our three sails are up today, there’s a southerly wind of about 14 knots, and we’re boogieing along at a comfortable 5.3 knots (roughly 6 mph on land). My husband Travis is nearby, polishing stainless steel with an old toothbrush and a rag as we slice through the water on a gentle see-saw of small, consistent waves. On our port side, the tiny outcroppings of land, Allen Island and Burnt Island stand sentinel, marking the entrance to the Port Clyde harbor. We’ll turn in there soon to anchor for the night, but I don’t want this sail to end. I just want to keep going.

Our sailboat’s name is Moxie. She's a Mason 43 monohull built in 1982. Moxie has a pretty blue hull, two sleeping cabins, a salon with a table, a tiny galley (kitchen) and one head (bathroom). She became part of our family in 2016, when we decided to quit land life for a while and go exploring with our two children, then six and nine years old. The original plan was to be gone a year, maybe two, but we ended up traveling for almost three-and-a-half years, sailing more than 5,000 nautical miles, visiting 24 countries and island nations, enduring two truly terrifying offshore passages, contributing zero dollars to our kids’ college funds, making dozens of lifelong friends and too many memories to count. In case you are wondering, we are not trust funders. We bankrolled this trip by selling a lot, saving a lot, by changing our ways of spending and by renting out our house in Telluride. The trip changed us. We had traded a life full of schedules and deadlines for a life ruled by weather, wind and the scope of our imaginations, and when we headed back to our home port of Telluride, expecting to fall back into our old routines with ease, we found ourselves longing for the freedom and spontaneity of our sailing days.

For the past three weeks, we have been back on Moxie, sailing her from Tiverton, Rhode Island, to Belfast, Maine. I was worried that after nearly three years off the boat we’d be rusty, hot-mess sailors, but luckily, my husband is a skilled old salt, and the muscle memory kicked in for the rest of us. Traveling by sailboat is extremely slow. It’s especially slow when there isn’t much wind, which has been the case on this trip, which suits me just fine. Moving at this pace, we have time to look for porpoises and seals, to check out the shoreline and marvel at the wild, crusty beauty of the Maine coast. Discovering places by sailboat is entirely different than finding them by land, we’ve found. I’ve written a lot in this column about my lifelong, insatiable curiosity and my constant chasing of “the new.” There are few things more exciting for me than to pull into a harbor or bay where I’ve never been before, to set an anchor or hook a mooring ball, and then hop in the dinghy with my family to go to shore and check it all out. I love pulling up to an unfamiliar dock, cleating our tender and walking up a steep gangplank with our belongings cinched in a drybag at my side and setting eyes on a brand-new place that begs us to explore it. Our daughter Vivian, now 12 years old, explains it like this: “When you approach a place by car, you have a destination to get to, and you don’t necessarily appreciate anything but that destination. But when approaching by boat and then walking around on foot, you are forced to really take in and appreciate your surroundings. And that’s what makes it so different and special.”

When we finally reach Belfast, our family has some hard decisions to make. It’s time to figure out what we will do with our Moxie. Keeping her on the hard (dry docked) and paying for her upkeep when we’re not using her is expensive and hard on the boat. Boats prefer to be in the water, receiving lots of continual care and pampering. Right now, neither our schedules nor our wallets can afford what our boat really needs, and we are wondering if now is the time to let her go. The thought is heartbreaking for all of us. This boat has been our most beloved home. We’ve celebrated Christmases and birthdays here, we’ve watched our kids grow, and we’ve learned, with so much clarity, about what truly matters to us. We’ve only got a few days, and we keep procrastinating — Trav can barely stand to even discuss it. Eventually, we will have to decide. In the meantime, I’m going to savor every moment we have aboard. I will let the warmth and the damp and the brine soak into my bones. I will jump into the frigid sea and stay salt-sticky all day. I will be grateful for it all. Oh, man … I just want to keep going.

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