What’s Next?

“It’s alright

Don’t need to know what’s around the bend

It’s okay now

You don’t need to know how every story ends.

It’s alright

It’s alright

It’s ok

Don’t need to hold on to what is gonna pass...”

Ryan Harris, It’s Alright

Heading Home

 
After two weeks aboard Wind Surf, a morning arrival into Lisbon, and two quieter days in Faro beside the tidal waters of the Ria Formosa, our quick unplanned spring journey had finally reached the point we had been trying not to think about. We were heading home, indeed we had to head home to take care of things.

For a little while, Portugal had softened the transition between relaxing at sea and the realities at home. Revisiting Sé Cathedral in Lisbon had returned us to the beginning of earlier journeys on the Rota Vincentina, the Camino Portuguese, as well as the Coastal and Espiritual routes - though not without the shock of realizing how much both the city and we had changed. Faro, by contrast, gave us a gentler landing. Birding the Ria Formosa on foot and then again by boat allowed us to remain close to water, tide, salt, and birds for just a little longer. We were no longer aboard Wind Surf, but neither were we fully returned to the world we had left behind.

Now, though, those moments…like so many others…have passed by.

Travel Realities

 
The flight from Faro to Toronto took about seven and a half hours. Depressingly, and in a way that seemed almost absurd after our crossing, that meant that every thirty minutes in the air, we would cover roughly the same distance as a full day aboard Wind Surf. What had taken us two weeks to experience slowly and deliberately would be undone by an airliner in little more than a quarter of a day.

It is hard to think of a sharper contrast. At sea, time and distance had meaning. Each day carried its own weather, light, wildlife, music, meals, conversations, and mood. We watched the Atlantic change colour beneath us. We crossed time zones by sailing and sleeping through them. We counted flying fish, scanned for whales, and felt the ship respond to wind and swell. In the air, the same ocean would become something distant and compressed beneath clouds, a blue abstraction crossed too quickly for the mind to follow.

What Comes Next

 
Beyond the flight, however, lay the more difficult return. We were heading back to Canada, back to our condo, back to the process of selling our home again, and back to all the questions that had been waiting beneath the surface even during the calmest days at sea. For the first time in years, neither of us really knows what comes next.

Usually, there has been another line on the map: another trail, another province, another pilgrimage, another voyage, another route drawing us onward. Even when things were difficult, the direction - in the past - was often clear. This time, the question of “what’s next?” does not simply mean where we were walking, sailing, or travelling next. It meant where we might live, how we might care for family, what kind of life we could still build, and what parts of the old one had to be let go of.

We had enjoyed the two-week reprieve that Wind Surf gave us. More than enjoyed it, really. We had needed it. The voyage offered calm, rhythm, music, fresh air, and enough distance from daily noise for our minds to quiet. But now we were returning to the stormy seas of our current situation, and no amount of romance about sailing was going to change that.

While we hope and plan to return to Europe later this year to hike, unfortunately, there will be no fall crossing aboard Wind Surf. She is heading into dry dock and then wet dock for updates, another new term in our growing vocabulary of ship life. In some ways, that felt fitting. Even the ship we had turned to for restoration was entering a season of repair, renewal, and work below the surface. Even the term the crew used for it, "an extension of life refit," seemed appropriate for the moment.

Flight Home

On the morning of our departure from Faro, I found myself holding a singular, unreasonable hope: that the world might somehow conspire to cancel our flight and "strand" us in Portugal a little longer. Rising fuel costs, global instability, airline delays, cancellations, rescheduled flights - surely, I thought, if the modern world was going to be chaotic, it might at least be chaotic in our favour this once.

It was not.

Luck, or misfortune, depending on one’s perspective, was not on our side this time. Our flight boarded and took off on schedule.

So home it was.

What Comes Next in Life

 
Whatever comes next is no longer safely in the distant future. It is now waiting for us in the coming week. That fact changes things. While we were at sea, the questions could remain somewhat abstract. What should we do? Where should we live? How do we simplify? What matters most? How do we care for the people we love while still building a life that does not crush us? The horizon had a way of holding and reshaping those questions to give you space to think about them with perspective. Land gives them back with deadlines attached.

Amid it all, the lyrics to one of my favourite songs keep returning to me - it's "Just a changing of the tides / simplify, simplify".

The voyage reminded me that the tides of the world will always flow in their own direction. Weather changes. Ports are missed. Plans alter. Families need us. Bodies age. Ships go into dry dock. The news continues. The world does not become easier simply because we stepped away from it for two weeks or walked along beaches in southern Portugal.

But the crossing also reminded me that even when we cannot control the tide, we can still choose how to set our compass. We can decide what matters enough to protect. We can choose what noise no longer deserves our attention. We can stop giving every demand the power to steer us. We can accept that not knowing the right answer immediately or being unable to handle everything does not mean we are lost.

Perhaps that is the best answer the voyage could have given us. Not certainty. Not a finished plan. Not a clean resolution waiting neatly at landfall. But a little more steadiness. A little more perspective. A little more willingness to let go of what has already passed and begin moving back toward what really matters.

Kirsten Hubbard once wrote, “You can’t control the past, but you can control where you go next.”

I do not yet know where that is. But I know we have to begin.

Whether by trails, rails, or sails - see you out there.