As many of you know we are very much the “go with the flow” type when it comes to life planning. We have a hard time to plan anything beyond six months into our future, and even when we think we have come to a good decision it often takes a turn for the unexpected before that 6 month plan is up. But that doesn’t stop us from playing the “what if” game. 

   Just last night Eben and I were discussing how it would be nice to build our own house, and what the criteria for that would be. We agreed that it would be somewhere tropical, because much of our “dream home” concept is open-air and warm outdoor spaces. Thanks to living on the boat we know that we do not want to live ocean front, salt water in the air ruins too many things. And being on or near a mountain with lots of outdoor space would be ideal. That didn’t really narrow down where we may build this home, but it was nice to dream and imagine the place.

who knows, maybe Eben will soon be doing this, but building a home for us instead

   We also often discuss the possibility of returning to the boat. We don’t know for how much longer we would sail, but Eben still has the desire to do one last hooray. The way we see it right now is we have three options. 

1) Sail down island towards Grenada, island hoping the whole way. This would mean short hops, and reuniting with some great sailing friends, Windtraveler, Mirador, and the Luppy 8. And Grenada has always been intriguing to me. We also think that these islands are only something we would visit if we were by boat, we don’t see ourselves ever flying to the Virgin Islands. The downfall to this plan, the cost. These islands are not cheap, they would actually be in the most expensive of what we have sailed. 

2) Sail the boat back up towards Georgetown, Bahamas and do another regatta season there. You either love or hate the regatta there. We love it. We have made so many friends in that area, and so many sailing friends that we know will return there as well, that it would be an awesome reunion. It is also a very family-friendly place. We envision that if we did this, at the end of that season we would then sail the boat to Mexico and spend some time there. But that is way down the road! The downfall to this plan is that we have done the Bahamas before, and again, it is not cheap. 

3) We sail the boat the 3 days across the large expanse of water that would bring us to central america. There are plenty of places there that we are keen to explore. And I would love for the girls to keep up with speaking spanish because they are doing really well already. The downfall to this plan is that it is a larger jump, and then once there we would most likely be doing a lot of traveling by land, not boat. In any of these above plans, the preferred outcome would be to enjoy our sailing trip as it may be one of our last, and possibly find an area where we would like to build this above mentioned dream home.

Or is this the life more for us?

   Today I was discussing all of this with a friend and she laughed and asked, “what about here?”. Yes, lets not forget, even though we had never even really planned to come to the DR we have now been living here for a full year and this country has found a special place in our hearts. We have really loved the work that we have been doing with this non-profit and the beautiful communities that we have been working with. We have also loved being non-nomadic enough to have made friends that are here, to stay, not sailing away. And the Dominicans, they are so welcoming and loving, we feel that we have made so many great friendships here and that we are wanted and loved here. (or at least our blonde gringitas are!)

The DR has been good to us.

   So we could very well end up sailing, or traveling, or staying put. Right now any of those options are complete possibilities and we are totally ok with that. What do you think? What should be in the Stolz’s near future?