It’s time to go North.

Link to Gordon Lightfoot’s Restless

I love this song.  For a long time, while living in our home in Washington, DC, when I heard this song I would think about the day that would come that David and I would sail away.  We would take that restless feeling and move on.

Those of us who live on a boat are lucky.  Very lucky. While Gordon Lightfoot sings:

“I can feel that restless yearning of those geese as off they roam
Then trade that for a warm bed and a place I can call home”

We can be thankful that we take our warm bed and the place that we call home with us wherever we go! As we follow the geese, the winds, the currents or just whatever catches our fancy, every anchorage, every harbor, and even the open sea is home.

We’ll be going as soon as my doctor gives me the thumbs up to leave town.  Hopefully in a week or two..or three at most!  Then we’ll spend a few weeks enjoying as many So. Cal anchorages as possible before making our way further North to the San Francisco Bay for the winter.

David is going into high speed doing so many projects as we ready ourselves for the trip North.  Both Buttercup and Wesley have been having their own hissy fits which must be repaired before we leave them.  We don’t know how long it will be before we come back down and pick up a car and drive it North, but we want both to be in good shape before we sail away. In addition to the unexpected car projects, the last things to do to the boat before we set off include building a second counter in the galley to house our second stove (that’s a story for later!) and doing the heavy work of planing the wood needed for the main saloon drop leaf table.  We’ll take the wood with us and David will likely put together the table somewhere “North” but I’m not quite sure where that will be.

We agree with Gordon that indeed–there’s a kind of restless feeling…

Lyrics

There’s a kind of a restless feeling and it pulls me from within
It sets my senses reeling and my wheels begin to spin
In the quietude of winter you can hear the wild geese cry
And I will always love that sound until the day I die
There’s a plain and a simple answer to each and every quest
From every quiet dance who might be a special guest
In a movie made for TV or a late night interview
You might even find them on the Young and the Restless too

Do ya get that restless feelin’ when you hear a whistle blast
Like an echo from the past
Of an old engine flyin’ down a road that’s ironcast

The lake is blue, the sky is gray, the leaves have turned to gold
The wild goose will be on her way, the weather’s much too cold
When the muskie and the old trout too have all gone down to rest
We will be returning to the things that we love best

Do ya get that restless yearning when you think about your dad
And the scrimshaw that he had
Of an old schooner rovin’ ‘neath a sky that’s ironclad

There’s a kind of a restless feeling and it catches you off guard
As we gaze off at the distance through the trees in my back yard
I can feel that restless yearning of those geese as off they roam
Then trade that for a warm bed and a place I can call home

Will ya get that restless yearning when you hear the wicked blast
Of a spectre from the past
Of a cold diesel rollin’ down a road that’s built to last

Still I get that restless feelin’ when I hear a whistle blast
See an image from the past
Of an old schooner flyin’ down a sky that’s overcast