In our precisely timed and tightly scheduled lives using cars, buses, planes and trains we usually get where we plan to within a few minutes (or hours) of our expectations and are mightily disgruntled if it is otherwise. In fact we depend on it. The concept of turning around, backtracking and waiting a day or so or indeed not being able to reach our chosen destination at all has become alien to us, and so it has taken us a bit of adaptation to quietly accept that some goals need to be deferred or changed.
Our first encounter with the wisdom of this was early in Mexico when we were bemused by the equanimity with which "old salt" Lou Freeman accepted the 20 miles he had had to backtrack in the middle of the night to spend a few days in Bahia Chamela waiting for the Northerlies to ease. Remembering that acceptance of conditions as they are not as we would like them made it a little easier for us to make the decision to turn around and give up 25 hard earned miles on the way down the Costa Rican coast. So what that we arrived back at our previous day's anchorage a little after midnight, tired and frustrated that we had spent all day going nowhere. We realized we should accept it and take solace in the fact that neither body nor boat were any the worse for wear.
This month in the San Blas Islands we had planned to meander our way down the island chain and leave to Cartagena through a pass seventy miles to the east. On the 20 mile leg from Isla Tigre to Snug Harbor we ran into 35 knot head winds and building seas. With no possibility to crack off because the channels through the coral reefs are narrow and plagued by the consequences of my stupidity in electing to tow the dinghy, after two hours of pounding we gave up and headed right back where we had come from. Again frustrating and plans needed to be redrawn, but no real damage done.
So when all this is over and we are on to new adventures we will try to bring this freshly learned patience and adaptability to bear in a new environment. If we don't like the look of the road ahead, we'll turn around, go home and wait a day or so. It will get better.