Why not now?
We were back in the Bay of Islands with a weather window developing on the forecast, so we told ourselves. The forecast changes. It always does.
For now, we waited. Kerri was on the WhatsApp with the community, watching the same ten-day horizon everyone else watched, knowing it would shift and crumble as it got closer. Meriwether was ready – we’d provision in Russell when it was time – but first we had to let the latest system pass over us and ride its tail out into the Pacific. The math was simple: slip between two systems instead of getting hit by one directly. Waiting meant moving the boat every day. Not vacation anchor-hopping but survival anchor-hopping. The wind kept coming from a new angle, and we kept chasing protection. It was March into July now, that endless cycle of “we can stay longer in the next anchorage” only for us to move again in a day.
The Bay of Islands accepted us back
By early July we were back in Opua, docked, running the final chores: laundry, fuel, water, customs. The kind of stuff you do two days before departure if you’re serious. The forecast had changed again. It now showed a four-day windless lull right through the middle of our path. No wind meant motoring, which meant lots of fuel. We carried enough for five days. Theoretically. On either side of that lull, the forecast looked good with solid wind, but the sea state was the problem: 3+ meter waves on the quarter, short-duration, ugly stuff. We would suffer hard.
Two days before departure, I was staring at that forecast and the math wasn’t working. Not just wasn’t working – it was actively dangerous. If the engine hiccupped during those four days of motoring, we’d have nothing but waves and a dead engine, and then the next system would show up. That’s not a passage window; that’s a lottery ticket. Kerri was getting the stress of it, which meant I was getting frustrated, which meant I was taking it out on her. Pointless cycle.
Accepting our new fate
Like every window before it, this window was closing. That evening we just stopped and admitted it. The plan wasn’t working. Neither of us were feeling good about any of this. So we changed it. We had two weeks to get out of New Zealand. We’d haul Meriwether back to Whangarei, 80 miles south, to the same yard we just splashed from back in January. The math was weird but real: import fees plus six months in New Zealand came cheaper than four months storage in Fiji during cyclone season.
It was a huge shift. Fiji-to-US flights cancelled, NZ-to-US flights booked, yard confirmed, rental car reserved, family notified – our focus pivoted from “passage” to “storage” in about an hour. And something shifted overnight. The stress just lifted. That’s when we realized we’d lost joy a long time ago. Somewhere in the waiting, the forecasts, the engine concerns and sea states – we’d stopped enjoying this. We were planning to sell the boat in a couple years anyway. We both wanted back in the van, to do our travels by plane instead of boat. So why drag it out? Why keep grinding through sailboat life waiting for some finish line that wasn’t even the one we actually wanted? It was the same question that got us into the boat in 2018: why not now?
