My Greetings

[Annie in WA]

Hi. I've been reading and posting for about a year now but I've never introduced myself. My name on the board is Annie in WA, but it will soon be Annie from somewhere else because my husband and I will be taking off from Port Townsend WA this month or early Sept. on our cutter-rigged '34 foot sloop for California then further South. We are some of the middle-aged, early retirement baby boomers form the US choosing the cruising life. No kids, no parents living, no house, decades of boating experience in the PNW and ready to expand our cruising grounds. We've been refitting for a year and a half and we're not ready, but barring something unforeseen, we're going.

Glad to meet you on the Forum. I'm looking forward to getting this show on the road and meeting folks in person.

Cheers,

Annie and Tom
S/V Tappan Zee

[boatman61]

Hey Anne... Hi Tom.. Welcome to CF...
Glad you guys have finally crawled outa de lifeboat...
Have a Ball...

[skipmac]

Hi Annie and Tom,

Congratulations on the end of work and start of cruising. Heading south before the winter sounds like a plan. Any plans after that? West to the Pacific, east to the Canal?

[Annie in WA]

Hi Skipmac. We have no solid plans, including no plans to return to the PNW. We want to go to Mexico for a year. I'm excited about learning Spanish and visiting places I've read about. after that we may go to the South Pacific, then New Zealand, or we may take the South America and Panama Canal route. Tom talks about crossing the Atlantic. At this point a lot of my drive cons from wanting to leave the US and experience living in other countries.

We figure we'll talk to a lot of other cruisers and figure it out as we go along. We'll change, the world will change, and plans will change.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Annie in WA

Hi Skipmac. We have no solid plans, including no plans to return to the PNW. We want to go to Mexico for a year. I'm excited about learning Spanish and visiting places I've read about. after that we may go to the South Pacific, then New Zealand, or we may take the South America and Panama Canal route. Tom talks about crossing the Atlantic. At this point a lot of my drive cons from wanting to leave the US and experience living in other countries.

We figure we'll talk to a lot of other cruisers and figure it out as we go along. We'll change, the world will change, and plans will change.

G'Day Annie,

Ya know, that last sentence tells me that you will likely be successful cruisers! I get tired of folks with little experience proposing detailed plans for their future and expecting us to bolster them with approval!

FWIW, my Ann and I left SF for MExico and points onward in 1986, and we're still wandering about the western SP. We used to make plans with itineraries and schedules and so on. Eventually we noticed that we seldom actually followed the plans, so we stopped worrying about them and kinda went with the flow. I don't mean that we ignore important things like cyclone seasons and so on, but none of this "we gotta get the anchor up because next week we gotta be in the Banks group" mind set.

I expect that you will love Mexico and will spend longer there than you thought you would, and ditto for your next cruising ground and the next...

You will find the long term cruising fraternity to be a wonderful group of folks wherever you go. Once you get a few miles from the States they will include folks from many nations, so in a sense you can enjoy several cultures at once, not just the indigenous one... really cool for us, anyway.

Enough blather... go forth and enjoy!

Cheers,

Jim

[SkiprJohn]

Aloha and welcome aboard!
Good to have you here.

[WebWench]

So very happy for the both of you! Have lots of great adventures!

[Navegante1105]

Hi Annie and Tom. Welcome to CF. I am living in the other side of the Atlantic. If You ever come this way, do not hesitate to contact Me. I am Spanish so we can practise the languaje if You wish, he,he,he
Enjoy your new way of life.
Regards, Sonja and Agustin.