Before we cast off the lines in July, in Toronto, we were probably more in tune with our bodies than we had ever been before. We were both doing hot yoga, several times per week. Kath had been doing lots of strength training. We were eating well, exercising regularly and doing every bit of preventative maintenance possible to ensure our long-term health. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

From July until mid October, we did a pretty good job of getting exercise on a regular basis. Lots of long walks, some stretching and a wholesome diet. Then the rally started. My alcohol consumption went from about 3 beers per week to about 3 beers per day – a 7x increase! We started eating more and more junk food. And our walks got shorter and less frequent. We did basically zero stretching exercises. Sometimes we’d be on the boat for days at a time, with no access to shore for a long walk. We knew that we should be implementing some sort of yoga and resistance training aboard, but we never got around to it!

So, here we are, back in Miami. When we got back, we immediately went into high gear, provisioning and doing some maintenance and upgrades to ensure the boat was ready to cross. It was three days of full-out organized chaos. Today, we declared ourselves ready to cross to the Bahamas. Coincidentally, tomorrow, there will be a brief window of appropriate weather. All we needed to do was grab a bit of fresh food, water and head out. Our good friends, Jeff and Kimberly on Club Pegu are nearby, and crossing in the same window. So we’d have the comfort of a good and experienced buddy boat to make crossing tomorrow even more attractive.

But it was while I was filling some water jugs that I realized, we can’t go yet. The sun was bright on my arms, but my arms were covered in goose bumps. If you know me, you know I’m the last person to reach for a sweater. Something was off. The previous night, I’d been awake with a ragged cough for a while. And Kath, who has an absolutely encyclopedic memory was forgetting things. Not big things, but normal, human things that anyone else might forget on a regular basis. That might be normal for mere mortals, but for Kath, that was a clear sign that something was amiss.

We contacted our friends and told them we were going to stay put for now. We seriously need some down-time. And now that I stop to think about it, it’s no wonder. By the end of 2019, we’d been somewhere new almost every single night for four months. The last week of the ICW had been the most tiring. Then, after arriving in Miami, we literally fled the boat within an hour of mooring. Then it was a great, but busy week with the kids in an AirB&B. (Oh, and I broke my nose there too, walking into a glass door!) Then we immediately drove for three hours to get a plane, then drove for another two hours. We spent all of our Christmas evenings enjoying parties with friends and family and almost every morning visiting an ailing relative in the emergency ward. We were treated like kings and queens by our family and friends, but it was tiring nonetheless. When we got back, we had but a few hours sleep before we started our provisioning frenzy.

As I write this, I’m wearing a light fleece. It’s 25 celsius in the boat right now, and the sun is beating on me. Yeesh! We will spend a few days not traveling. Not rushing. Not learning. Not sorting through charts and wind predictions. I plan to watch Veronica Mars until my fever subsides, (my guilty pleasure when my brain takes the day off), then wander the dock and look for our friend Larry, the manatee .(We saw him again yesterday.) Then maybe fall asleep reading a book, and then maybe go for a long walk.

I’m sure I will be restless again soon. But, sometimes, you gotta just let your body win one.