My ticket to Frankfurt was booked.  The plan was to head to Missouri for Thanksgiving then jump across the Atlantic to Germany so Maria and I could spend a little more than two weeks together.  We hadn’t been able to let go of one another since we said goodbye in person almost four months prior in Honduras.

We met while she was on holiday in Caye Caulker, Belize with friends from Germany and from her work project in Guatemala.  We took things slowly despite knowing we had limited time together.  At the end of a week we decided she and her friend would sail with me to Honduras.  We weren’t ready to say goodbye.

It wasn’t long after I sent Maria off on a ferry from Roatan, Honduras to return to Guatemala that I began looking for cheap flights to see her again.  We spoke almost every day via Skype and though we knew we might only prolong the final goodbye, we wanted to spend more time together.

After a magical week in the mountains of Guatemala playing with the kids of her project and exploring the streets of Antigua we said goodbye again.  This time we knew there would be at least one more meeting.  In three weeks Maria would be returning to Honduras to spend 10 days with me on Jargo before returning to Germany.

I’ve never shared anything so perfect with anyone as I did with Maria in those final 10 days.  We lived simply, swimming in the afternoons, enjoying meals together, gazing at the stars, and walking the beaches of our own private islands.  As we slowed our lives to live deliberately, as it always does, time ran away at a rapid pace.

In the midst of a political coup we drove from Roatan to San Pedro Sula where a plane took her from me back to her home in Germany.  In the anguish of the loneliness I now swam in alone I threw myself into preparing Jargo to go to sea and the roughest passage I’ve made yet on my journey, Roatan to Cayo Vivorillo.  Only the strain of a brutal offshore passage helped me forget the loss I felt at letting her go.

Crazily, we never really meant those goodbyes.  From the first day I found internet we were talking again on Skype.  Face to face, through a computer, we stayed in touch rarely missing a day.  Six months after we met, with a ticket to Frankfurt booked, the question came, “what’s next”?

Maria is in her dream job and knows she wouldn’t be happy living a vagabond life aboard a boat.  I know if I quit my voyage now I wouldn’t be able to stay put and would eventually leave her to finish what I’ve already started.  Neither of us believes we could go for two years without severely hurting one another while I work my way towards Europe.  So, we’ve said goodbye again, a cancelled flight, still in love, with the hope that maybe in the future the timing will work.

In those last seconds, looking at one another through our computers, when we were to say goodbye and end our final call, instead she said, “I love you”, and the line went dead.  There are no guarantees for the future, but who would have thought a beach front romance would have gone this far? 

Lee Winters
Skype: lee_winters

www.SailingForSOS.com