Welcome Benson!

Join us in welcoming a new ‘crew’ to the family, “Benson”. Benson comes to us from Germany. Born of Mercedes Benz in 1994, he’s got quite a few miles on him (325,000 km!) but he shows signs of being up for doing a few more. On the outside, he’s got a few bangs and bondo on him, and on the inside he’s a bit frayed and worn, but we are so pleased to have him as wheels, we think he is the most beautiful thing in the world. I mean to have a car again, how good is that?!

This weekend we are off in Benson to wine country for our second trip. The photos are from our first foray when Breanna, Mark and Eitann were still with us. Gosh that was fun. Sunday we are visiting our new friends, Mashupa and Khabiso out there too. They are South Africans from Lesotho. We met Mashupa, when he picked us up hitchhiking in Richards Bay in November and have stayed in touch since then.

If it sounds like it’s all play and games, it’s not. Irena and I have spent the last two weeks digging for work. Just this week, I have thrown my lot in with a coaching firm in Cape Town, developing the corporate side of the business. Now I am working every day, partly from the boat and partly at the office! Irena is busy networking with various prospective clients and other consultants, and we expect she too will be finding something to do besides make me lunch. (Just kidding Honey!) Soon Coaching Works Pte. Ltd. of Singapore will have two contributing consultants.

We can see the end of our time in beautiful Simon’s Town is coming. It’s an hour’s drive to my office in Cape Town and Irena will be busy probably soon in the city too.  I expect we will choose to move the boat to Royal Cape Marina, right in the centre of the City. Not very pretty, but very practical. My immediate goal is to make enough money to allow me to do some ‘no guilt’ soaring at the Cape Soaring Club, Irene’s goal is to make enough money to go see her grandchildren!

Reflections

It seems fitting we should be so close to a place called the Cape of Good Hope. This is the way I am feeling these days. Amidst the busy-ness that is my life, I feel a returning glimmer of calm satisfaction. I am meditating again more regularly, reconciling myself to dealing with the boat waving back and forth while I sit cross legged early mornings in our berth. I am also tapping the inevitable fears and insecurities (EFT, definitely my favourite tool for releasing emotional energy) that arise in the course of this transition. And, Irena and I are exercising pretty regularly, very gradually, working our way back into some resemblance of fitness.

These are all modest efforts, but remarkably helpful, nevertheless, in their cumulative effect. At sea, and during the tumult of transition from harbour to harbour over the last six months, I have failed to maintain this regime, and lost touch with this other ocean of calm as a result. Today, I am reminded again of the deep value to the quality of mind, and hence quality of life, these activities engender. Today, my sense of calm satisfaction is the immediate reward for my ablutions of self-care. Tomorrow, the longer term reward will be the quality of life past experience has demonstrated I create out of this state of being. It is amazing and humbling to see how much arises out of so little.

This is the ‘C’ for Capacity of which I speak in the 7Cs. Capacity is about the practices of care and strengthening of body, mind, emotion and spirit. The practices are so basic, so simple, yet so hard to discipline. They are so rewarding, yet so easily sloughed off. Join me in a newfound commitment to stay with the program, and compassion for ourselves when we do not!