So we finished the Great Loop! Our navigation system draws tracks as we go, so we could actually see our new yellow line cross over the blue line we had laid down way back in July 2019. How did it feel? Eh.
Our mission was never really to move the boat around in a big circle; we wanted to explore parts of America that seemed foreign to us, and for a long time we were able to do that in a half-traveler, half-tourist way that was sometimes exhausting but often transcendent. Home-schooling in a beach town where all the other kids are vacationing? Exhausting. Also: searching for grocery stores anywhere near a marina, finding a place to land a dinghy, and repeating dropping out of work calls because there’s no cell service on the Tombigbee River.
But, spending all day Tuesday in Chicago’s Field Museum – and then going back again on Wednesday? Getting invited to tour a home art studio in Paducah? Deciding on a whim to travel all night across the Gulf of Mexico so we could explore the Dry Tortugas? Crabbing with locals in the Chesapeake? These things happened because we were simply able to stay in the right place until the right time arrived.
Then March arrived, and suddenly nobody could find a right place to be. Our home was better than most — we feel lucky that social isolation came relatively easy and that we were never trapped inside. (There really is no inside in our lives.) And turning away from on-shore activities allowed us to appreciate the landscape of the U.S. southeast coast, which surprised us with its expansive, quiet grandeur.
But all spring we were, essentially, just moving the boat around in a big circle. We kept moving, because there was never a good reason to stop and because the people we love most in the world were up ahead. And because we were aching for New York, our glorious city, feeling an urgent need to be there even though everyone who actually was there insisted we were better off staying away.
We spent July 3, the anniversary of our departure, anchored off of Sandy Hook NJ watching the Hamilton stream, and “greatest city in the world” was still echoing through our heads as we slipped into New York Harbor a few days later. We parked the boat in Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is a straight shot on the B63 from our old apartment in Park Slope and one of our favorite spots. When we arrived, for possibly the first time ever we didn’t see a single boat flying a Trump flag. We walked up to Borough Hall and saw a huge yellow Black Lives Matter mural on the street. Felix was ecstatic.
We reconnected with friends on street corners and stoops, in backyards and on the fly bridge. We ate bagels and pizza. We admired the new outdoor restaurant street structures, despaired over the line to get into Trader Joe’s, and wandered through an eerily quiet nighttime Carroll Gardens.
The next day, we crossed our wake — and kept right on moving forward. They say it’s about the journey, not the destination, but if you think about it a circular trip still has a destination, even though the endpoint and beginning point are the same. We’re still figuring out what shape our journey will take.