Our visit to the States — October 11, 2023 through March 1, 2024 (subtitle: Life is full of surprises but you gotta roll with the punches)

I believe we said in one of our blog posts that a “sailor’s plans are carved in jello.” We certainly related to that with all the unexpected twist and turns, some really bad and others merely inconvenient, we experienced during our sail across the South Pacific. On a positive note, nothing builds resilience better than facing and conquering adversity. After you survive one near disaster the next one doesn’t seem quite as daunting. That said, nothing prepares you when you go back home to the States for a 2 month visit to see family and get in those annual doctors visits and, in the middle of that visit, your daughter is diagnosed with advanced metastatic breast cancer. Somehow though you quickly get into mama and papa bear mode, cancel all your plans, make arrangements for an extended stay and get busy making sure your daughter is getting the best clinical care available and helping her adjust to this new normal. Fortunately, thanks to advances in breast cancer treatment, the type of breast cancer our daughter has is highly treatable and she has responded beautifully to treatment — medically and emotionally. Her prognosis is excellent. 🙏 So, with 3 months of treatment under her belt and with the encouragement of our family (including our daughter) and our daughter’s oncologist, we got on a plane to return to Australia the afternoon on March 1, arriving (after crossing the international date line) the morning of March 3.

Though we would do anything to hit the rewind button and somehow change the course of events, we know that life is short and made sure to find many moments of joy during our extended State-side stay. Long time family friends welcomed us into their Tribeca (Manhattan) apartment for a month while we waited for our Crown Heights (Brooklyn) sublet, just 5 blocks from our daughter’s apartment, to be ready. We stayed in that sublet for 2 1/2 months. During our 3 1/2 month residency in NYC we explored Manhattan and Brooklyn on foot (10,000+ step days were not uncommon), got together with friends from our time in New York as well as dear friends from afar who came to visit and ate some amazing meals. (The warmer weather clothes we left on the boat were definitely a bit tighter when we returned.) We particularly enjoyed becoming locals in our Brooklyn neighborhood, developing friendships with the baristas at our favorite locally owned coffee shop, experiencing the sights and sounds at the nearby Brooklyn Botanist Gardens’s annual holiday light display and attending neighborhood events including comedy night at a cafe and trivia night at a bar, both conveniently located on our block. We also took advantage of our relative proximity to spend some extra time with our children and grandchildren. And, of course, we loved being close to our daughter and her fiancé, popping in for short visits and dining both in and out together. In the end, as we said, we’d change our daughter’s diagnosis in a nanosecond if we could, but we would not change our time in the States even though it meant a delayed return to Australia.

But we are here now, energized by our daughter’s great progress and ready to explore. Though we had to cancel the 6 month tour around Australia and New Zealand we had originally planned, we were able to put together a last minute trip, departing March 9, that will allow us to explore Tasmania, the Southeast portion of Australia, including Melbourne, Jarvis Bay and the Blue Mountains, and both the North and South Islands of New Zealand over the course of 9 weeks. We feel incredibly fortunate (so don’t cry for us Argentina). After our travel smorgasbord, we will arrive back to Che Figata May 12. That will give us just enough time to get ourselves and Che Figata ready for our next big adventure together: the sail to Indonesia! We will write more about that when we return to Che Figata in May. In the meantime, because we are keeping this blog mostly to preserve our memories (why else would we record our experiences in such excruciating detail — our apologies!), we will periodically post blog entries as we explore Australia and New Zealand by land.

But before we sign off, a big thank you! Many of you were aware of what was going on in our lives as we extended our stay back in the States. We were so touched by the outpouring of support from family and friends and appreciated the prayers, positive energy and good vibes you sent our way. Whatever you did it worked and you gave us hope (gently reminding us not to go to that dark place) and made us feel so loved at a time when we both needed it. We often say that it seems incongruous to talk about how blessed we feel in the wake of our daughter’s diagnosis (and, again, we’d wave that magic wand to make it go away if we could) but we feel so grateful on so many levels. We have the most awesome collection of friends and family members on the planet! Love and big virtual hugs to all of you. ❤️

Now off to Tasmania!