All systems Go! Ready for departure...

One of my favorite states of being is the time just before departing on a grand adventure. The time and energy spent preparing everything coils itself together like a spring and I feel that stored energy in me ready to burst forth. The days are compressed, and lengthened (I have written before on my beliefs about time being less linear in the human experience, especially while traveling, than clocks would have us believe) in a way that is really enjoyable, and the background noise of the mind, so ever present, is playing a constant tune of trip excitement that beats the hell out of other petty noises.

Kiwi Grip is done and looks great

We are now in these days of pre-trip anticipation, and this recent weekend on Aeolus put the icing on the cake of preparations. I went up and finished putting Kiwi Grip on the deck, and took several loads of things off Aeolus that we don't need for the trip. I changed the oil and the transmission fluid. I cleaned this and that. I moved things around to make space, and I spent some time organizing all the nautical charts for rounding Vancouver Island into a sequential order for easier access.






I'll say here that this was my first time actually changing the transmission oil using my new system that I documented here on this blog. IT WAS FANTASTIC! I hooked up my suction hose to the outlet hose I attached to the fitting on the drain hole, and the oil came right out in a few seconds with no spills and no fuss. And I was taking the oil from the very bottom of the tranny so I was getting the heavier metal shavings and anything else that is hard to get if you are just inserting a hose from the top that may or may not rest on one part of the bottom.

Elliott is about to spend a whole lot more time learning how to captain a sailboat!

So here we are. Perched on the precipice. Ready to go and poised to launch. The food is purchased and organized, the boat is ready, the plans are made, and all that lies between then and now is a few nights and days. We do not know what will happen on this trip. We don't know which hazards will present themselves. We don't know how we will deal with the challenges we will face. We don't know these and many other things...and yet we know what matters: We head off for an adventure confident in ourselves, in each other, and in the great teacher that is wilderness. We go not knowing who will be when we return, but knowing that we will like that version of ourselves very much indeed.

We have dreamed this trip, and are now about to begin it, and we hope our boldness has genius, power and magic in it!