Today Sweden decided to continue the ban on non-essential travel from countries outside of the EU until October 31st, so it is now clear that we will not travel to our boat in Sweden until next year. We hope to begin our sailing trip in April 2021, one year later than expected.

So, yes, we are disappointed. We had been pretty sure that we would get over for at least some time this summer/fall to get to know the boat and make any adjustments needed. But, like so many other people, we underestimated the level of disruption from Covid.

The boatyard, Hallberg-Rassy has been great. They will store the boat for the winter and we will plan on a date for the Spring 2021 to pick up Ithaka in Ellos. We recognize there is a possibility that the EU will still be closed in Spring 2021, but we will worry about contingencies for that later.

In the meantime, we just reached out to a sailing charter company in Maine, and we have reserved a 30 foot Catalina for a week in September. Maybe not too surprisingly, they are very busy and don’t have many options. We also signed up with 59 North to sail in November from Annapolis to the Caribbean.

We have been reflecting back on our journey so far. Several years ago we came up with the idea of getting a boat in Europe and sailing it back to the U.S. East Coast, knowing that we had a lot of preparation to do. We have gradually worked on this, taking all sorts of classes, trainings, and getting offshore sailing experience. We figured out retirement plans, dog care, house sitting, bill paying, resigned from our commitments... and then recognized about 3 weeks before we were due to leave that things were not going to go as planned! Perhaps this is the ultimate lesson of our experience so far: to never assume that events will go according to plans, that the most important thing is a good partnership with good communication, and to be sure to have fun and enjoy friends along the way. Cavafy (author of the poem, Ithaka) had it right, it is all about the journey and not the destination.

In the meantime, happy adventuring to all, nautical or otherwise. Hope to see you in Sweden next spring.