We Did the Next Right Thing
An idea, 8 nights, & now howler monkeys
I wanted to ask Corey, "Can we celebrate yet?" But I already knew his answer.
On Saturday evening we finally dropped our anchor just down the river from the marina that we’ll call home for the next few months.
After 8 days & 8 nights on the open water, we made it to the Rio Dulce in Guatemala.
When customs boarded our boat, they saw our floating feline (Pineapple) & one of the officials said in a strong accent, “look at the tiger!” They smiled. But most importantly, they let us all into their country.
This will be our oasis — surrounded by giant mountains & jungles teeming with birds & howler monkeys while hurricanes rage through the Caribbean. But also, it’s where we’ll take a much-needed break after 10 months of constantly getting bashed around by waves & obsessing over weather forecasts every single day.
The cool lil marina wasn’t quite ready for us yet, which is why we were at anchor last night. But honestly — what’s one more day?
We freakin made it.
We’ve “only” been doing this sailing thing for 10 months, & no one taught us how to do any of it. We had to learn the hard way about crossing huge stretches of dangerous ocean & thriving on a floating home the size of a parking spot.
And just like every major jump before this, we doubted whether we had what it took to make it across the next stretch.
On basically every sail, we’ve needed to learn some hard-earned lesson. Some small, like how to use the right sails to eke out an extra knot of boat speed. And some large, like learning through doing that we can’t take big waves on the side of the boat (this is how you capsize!).
So this time, we seriously wondered: What kind of crap will Neptune throw at us this time?
We knew weather predictions couldn’t tell us with anything approaching certainty about what might happen after that 5th day at sea. And we didn’t want to get ourselves killed.
But still, for months, we just kept telling ourselves we’d make the jump “sometime in April.” The sailor charts said this month was the last one with steady moderate winds & relatively low thunderstorm risk before hurricane season. Betting on decades of history, even with a changing climate, was the best we could do.
And so, November through April, country by country — all through the U.S., the Bahamas, then Jamaica — we sailed through the times when the risks of storms were nil to a place we could find refuge when the cycle started again.
We kept inching our way to Guatemala.
We knew this is what we needed — for the safety of our floating family & for the knowledge that we could do it, too.
By the time we got to Jamaica, there was no longer really a choice about whether to make this sail.
Ultimately we trusted that it would work out.
Last week we traversed nearly 800 miles in our little sailboat — about the same distance as floating from Seattle to San Francisco. And for much of it, we were days away from any help.
But thankfully, we didn’t need any.
Our sails kept filling with wind. Our engine kept humming without a hiccup. Neptune gave us steady winds & waves but nothing we couldn’t handle.
We also had no marital drama. No sick boat cat. No near-collisions with barely-submerged shipping containers. No pirates.
I didn’t think it was possible to be that exposed for that long & come out that clean.
“Just wait,” said some part of my brain. “You always have to give something up to get something this good.”
But no. I just rubbed my eyes. I’m here, in the Rio Dulce, exactly where we said we’d be.
I’m not even that tired.
The boat isn’t even dirty.
Did I already say nothing broke?
The most surprising moment of the whole trip came just after we spotted a small island north of Honduras. A tiny yellow bird landed on Corey’s hat & stayed with us for miles.
Out there with nothing but water & sky, my mind went places it hasn’t in a while.
“Why you gotta self-sabotage, man?”
That question came from a counselor named Juan at my drug & alcohol rehab — nearly 20 years ago.
Back then, I was saying things like, “What’s the point of trying? It’s all going to shit anyway.”
But that was my experience until then. Like good things couldn’t just happen to me. Like there always had to be another shoe that dropped.
Juan had heard this before.
“You ever think that maybe the world ain’t that bad, man? That maybe if you start doing the right thing, good things start to happen?”
I knew people who relapsed because they decided it was only a matter of time before they failed. They fell apart before things even got hard, because some part of them decided they didn’t deserve any good thing coming their way.
I trusted Juan, though.
My higher power, whatever tf that was, wanted me to be happy.
All I had to do was the next right thing.
It’s how I’ve accomplished everything since. 18.5 years of sobriety. Working from community college to a PhD from Harvard. Saving enough cash to leave my full-time job. Learning to sail.
Getting here.
In the coming weeks, I’ll have a lot more to share about the crossing itself. But really, I just needed to tell you we made it.
I’ll never forget, last June, one of the workers at the boatyard in North Carolina asking us when we were coming back. We told him that we weren’t. He looked at us like we’d just become astronauts & said we were moving to Mars.
Then we sailed half a day to the next town, hit some small waves, & I started crying at the helm, worried Corey would fall off the boat while pulling down the headsail.
We watched our first sunset from the water & anchored for the first of more than 300 nights.
Trudging from the swamps to the Chesapeake Bay. Sailing offshore to NYC. As far north as Newport, Rhode Island. All the way south through Florida, the Bahamas, Jamaica, & now Guatemala.
I’m really freakin proud of us for having the audacity to let good things happen.
But like any other goal — you reach it & then the question arrives: now what?
Rio Dulce, from what I can already tell, is a sailor’s paradise — especially on a small budget like ours. Our marina is $270/month, tucked inside a nature preserve with howler monkeys in the canopy, an outdoor kitchen, hot showers, free wifi, & weights to lift for the first time in over a year. A small town called Fronteras is a few minutes away by dinghy where people sell fresh tortillas, juicy mangos, & giant avocados in the streets. I also heard something about a movie night.
Beyond the boat, there’s rich Mayan history to explore, active volcanoes nearby, foods I’ve never tasted, wildlife I’ve never seen, & high-school Spanish that desperately needs an upgrade.
And there’s this newsletter to level up.
When I first started writing Radical Paths, I didn’t intend for it to be so focused on sailing. I called it “Radical Paths” because I wanted to write about all sorts of people who chose their own definition of success, took real risks, & built fantastic lives. Sailing was just one example of the crazy things someone might do to align their lives with their deepest values.
That old vision hasn’t gone anywhere. In the coming months, with more time to work & research than I’ve had in a year, I’m going to put more depth into each piece. More context, more data, more ideas beyond just what’s happening on the water.
After all, the whole point of writing is to keep learning something new about the world. And I’m so stoked to keep exploring — with you.
Turns out you can just get good things.
Radical Paths is 99% funded by subscriptions. I’m able to dedicate untold hours to this project because of my paying readers (thanks so much to all of you!). If you've been enjoying the journey & want to see where it goes next, consider upgrading for $5/month or $50/year.
oh yea….
If you’d like to chip in with a tip to support the adventure, every bit helps keep the boat floating & the story going. Thank you 🙏
Until next time,
—Cory
Congratulations on another successful passage Cory, Corey, and Pineapple! Glad it was a smooth one, well done!
Thanks for posting your update! Glad all went well. I had no doubts that it would all work out BTW. I am curious about the planning / logistics of a trip like yours if you’d care to post at some point. I’m assuming you booked a slip days / weeks / months in advance? As well as the weather and route research? Visas, pet regulations, food, emergency contingencies…
BTW - your Substack has the best comments! So much love about you and to you all! My opinion obviously but the “I also did that” comments are so tiresome… and thankfully not found here.