Plans, decisions, roads or way points taken or not taken, they all now have the benefit of hindsight. But unfortunately it's not just my foresight that isn't 20/20, it's also difficult to look back and see how things might have been different or better if we would have decided on path A rather than B. If we didn't stay in Mexico for all 4 yrs, how would our cruise have turned out, would we now be somewhere on the US East coast? Would we have made more friends and had a "better" time? Or would we have made fewer friends and had a "worse" time? Who knows, I sure don't and didn't. Perhaps one reason I can't see the past with 20/20 hindsight is because I'm much too busy trying to figure out the fog of the future to dwell on the past, but that doesn't mean we didn't learn a few things or that we wouldn't have done a few things differently if we could take a ride in Mr. Peabody's WayBack Machine.
Without a doubt, our single biggest regret is that after 4 years of living in Mexico our kids and the entire family is not fluent in Spanish. So if we could set the dials on Mr. Peabody's Wayback machine and head to Mexico again we would have taken the first year and put the kids in a Mexican school. 100% Spanish emersion with Spanish tutors after school. The whole family would have made becoming fluent Spanish speakers a top priority. Sure my Spanish is dramatically improved but the truth is we passed up on a once in a life time opportunity to have the whole family learn a second language. We are certainly not alone when it comes to blowing the Spanish language opportunity, most cruisers don't learn Spanish beyond ordering food and simple greetings. It's hard to say why, but it's just the reality and it is our biggest regret as we look around California now and see just how more marketable our kids would be in the future job markets speaking Spanish.
In what may seem like a rather surprising change, I don't think I would have felt the need to cast off jobless with the mindset and idea that to be a cruiser you have to be retired, on a work sabbatical, or simply an unemployed boat hobo. Lori often says that I "failed at cruising" and I must admit that by our preconceived notion of what cruising was, I certainly did fail. I need to be busy, and although the never ending list of boat projects did a nice job of filling time, I needed and wanted something more. So I was active in the SSB radio nets becoming a net manager, we threw pot lucks and parties aboard THIRD DAY at the drop of a sombrero and my need to have something going ultimately was the catalyst for starting up Cruise RO Water. Looking back through the haze of romanticized memories, I would head south with a Job! I know that sounds totally crazy and it's certainly not the normal Cast Off dream. But let's also admit that most of those dreams never come true. Trust me; I see the unrealized dreams all the time in my water maker business when the new owner of a boat calls me to ask how to finish the water maker installation that was originally purchased 2 years ago. Almost any job you do with a computer and phone in the States can be done in Mexico now with internet and cell phones. It's not something I realized or even thought about when we were casting off and certainly the technology improvement is making this more of a reality than it was 5 years ago.