Our Plans for the Future

* Move to an oil boomtown in North Dakota and jump in on the excitement.
* Open a restaurant.
* Call up the old contacts and try to jump back into the corporate world we left in the Pacific NW.
* Run a sailing charter business in Alaska.
* Contact a corporate head hunter and put the search out for Anything in Anywhere, USA.
* Put the boat for sale, buy a cheap camper van and tour America while we wait for a buyer
* Sell JaM, buy a much cheaper boat suitable for the Inland Passage, move to Alaska, live on the new boat and get some funky low-wage jobs that allow lots of time for cruising the Inland Passage.
* Take JaM to Panama and keep cruising until the world ends or the economy improves, whichever comes first.

We've discussed all these possibilities and more on JaM in the last six months. None of them is quite the right fit. We've already stayed on our boat one year longer than originally planned. Though our lifestyle is getting cheaper and cheaper in Mexico as we learn more and more tricks, we are still spending money. We are not retired and we know we will have to return to work someday, but when? One thing for sure is that life in Mexico is much, much cheaper than life in America. Our dwindling dinero can either last us for months in America, or years in Central America.

We just have these circular conversations, trying to divine what the best move is for our family. The truth of the matter is - it was a lot easier to make the decision to come out here. Even though it was so scary to pull the plug on everything we knew and move onto a boat, the reverse decision of how to jump back into American life is even scarier. It’s like jumping off and on a fast-moving merry-go-round. Every kid on the playground can tell you that jumping off is easier than getting back on. If you don’t time the re-entry just right you are going to get trampled. The decision to move back is almost impossible to know what to do, especially since the economy still sucks. There are two big unknowns we face because of the economy - “Can we find a buyer for our boat?” and “Can we find viable employment?” Anyone with a crystal ball is very welcome to jump in with the answers for us. In the meantime, we’re just enjoying life, and having lots of conversations.