It's our medicine

As a dear friend observed, getting out on Feisty is the medicine our family needed during these odd times. Nay, it was the medicine that Mountain Dad and I needed. The Mountain Kids are gambolling through the days with playfulness, cooperation and acceptance. They live in the present with a grace that I aspire to. Whether we're navigating the demands of Learning-From-Home or packing our bags to set sail on Feisty, they roll with our agenda. So, when we say that getting out on Feisty for a week was medicine for our souls, it's the curmudgeonly parents to whom we refer. 

We set sail with caution, aware that our choice to adventure forth could have impacts on others if we were to get in strife. We sailed conservatively and chose to be in a system of lakes that were quiet and truly embraced isolation from others. We were out on Feisty for a week and relished getting close; to each other in our tiny cabin, to nature, to sailing opportunities. We made mistakes, ran aground, got surprised by quickly changing winds and felt cooped up after two days of not getting off the boat. She is quite small, after all. My inner angst surfaced, as I realised how much there is to worry about while sailing. I worried about losing the kids overboard, running aground, storms, wind, heeling, running out of petrol, tides, overloading our onboard port-a-potty. Fortunately, we figured each challenge out, including offloading the truly-overloaded-port-a-potty to a poo barge that came by to visit and offer us the free service of whisking our waste away. Mountain Dad was overjoyed at this last, he kept repeating, "they just took it away! I don't think you realize how lucky we are!!" Without either of us acknowledging it, we know that the task of emptying the contents will fall to him.

Our trip took us from the mooring outside my parents house, across Port Stephens, up the Myall River where we spent a few days exploring the glorious Myall Lakes. And then back again.

It was an absolute tonic.