June, 2107
It just happens every so often: we hit a wall. Early in our cruising experience this was a big deal, a potential end to our cruising. Now as experienced (and anti-depressant medicated) cruisers, we have come to accept this as part of the cruising life (although admittedly at the worst of times we debate packing it in and heading for land life).
Basically, while there are wonderful aspects to the cruising lifestyle, much of it is about travel and novelty. These are fantastic things, but only in limited doses. Travel requires so much brain exercise, stress, adjustment, etc., that it’s like burning a candle on a high flame. It burns bright; but the candle goes down fast.
We’ve come to know the signs of burnout. It’s a feeling of lagging behind oneself, of feeling off-track and a little overwhelmed. We can tell we have it when nothing interests or excites us. This time, it happened after arriving in New Caledonia when we found ourselves suddenly losing interest in visiting areas we hadn’t yet seen or cruising the islands around us. We didn’t feel like it, nor did we feel like heading on to Vanuatu, or anyplace else for that matter. In a nutshell: we wanted to sit at a marina, eat yummy food, watch TV, drink wine, and worry about nothing else.
Burnout, for us, has several causes, but it was easy to see what had caused this particular bout. We’ve been cruising constantly this year and haven’t had our customary break: a long stay in a marina where any travel we do is by car and we don’t have to worry about weather. (A storm coming with 40- to 60-knot winds? How interesting! Let’s put out another fender and add another line or two; then we’ll head out to lunch.)
Another cause is something we call Big Project Letdown. It happens when we complete a huge task (finals at school, a huge work deadline, managing some major event, putting up tiresome relatives as house guests, etc.) Once the task (and the resulting celebration) is over, there’s relief, but instead of the expected happiness, life feels kind of empty for awhile, and the blahs set in. In our case, the big project had been getting from Sydney to New Caledonia, not easy this year. In fact getting out of Oz before our visas expired has been a nagging concern since Tasmania and part of the “big project” of getting to the tropics.
Between not having a break this year and accomplishing the task of getting from Tasmania to Sydney then on to New Caledonia in May, I think this burnout was inevitable. Thankfully we were in the city of Noumea. It’s a huge help to have this happen in a place we’re familiar with, where we know our way around town, where to eat, shop, do laundry, what’s special to buy, and where to move if the marina gets full. I can’t imagine going through this in a place that totally foreign.
That’s how we came to sit in two different marinas for 3 1/2 weeks, our only movement being between one and the other. Do I feel guilty for “squandering” this time? Yes. I always feel that “it may be our last time here” pressure to see and do. But I’ve learned that the carrot works better than the stick, and when there’s no carrot, the solution is not to beat ourselves up with the stick but to give just give ourselves a break and take a rest from it all. During our 3 1/2 weeks in Noumea, we didn’t cruise, nor did we travel on land.
We did, however, find some good new eateries, revisited old ones, took full advantage of the best fish market in the south pacific, went to the French cheese festival, helped another couple who were also in a funk (they just needed more information–we suffered the same crisis when we first went to Fiji), made some new friends, and gradually found our feet again. Catching our breath probably took two weeks, getting excited about exploring a new place took three. But in the end, we were ready to head on and excited about an exotic and new (to us) place called Vanuatu.
Below, a photo gallery with some nice moments from our time in Noumea. As you can see, our recovery featured lots of food, but we somewhat balanced all the eating with lots of walking. And it wasn’t completely unhealthy food: after all there’s lettuce on all those burgers and asparagus on the pizza. (You can click to enlarge/scroll through any of the photo galleries to follow.)
When the time came to leave, we headed out to a gorgeous anchorage near the pass to spend the night. Rich asked how I liked it, and I told him we have to move; let’s please find someplace ugly so I don’t feel so bad about leaving after not spending time in places like this. (We’ve actually seen a lot of New Cal in past years but there is so much we have yet to do.)
New Cal kindly helped us along as we had a bloom of flies the next day. We moved to another anchorage closer to the pass; the flies persisted. We’ve been to this area before and the flies aren’t the norm, but sometimes nature just hatches things in big batches. And so that evening, we headed out the pass glad to leave the flies behind. (Below, a few photos of Port de Goro, our final anchorage near the pass.)
In the meantime, I’ve been working here and there on some Tasmania reports and will still post those, then get back to our normal blog.–Cyndi
Update: We’ve since arrived in Aneityum, Vanuatu, where we’ve spent a few days and really fallen in love with the place. Blog posts about Aneityum to come.
