When the tide turns

Our vacation technically was not a failure. Granted, we came nowhere near completing the route we'd mapped, nor fulfilling the pledge my husband and I made to help friends sail from Quebec City up the Gulf of St. Lawrence, around the vast snout of Canada's Gaspé Peninsula to Prince Edward Island.

But it turned out to be a really great vacation — from our perspective — once we had to abandon our plans, although that decision was more difficult than we'd imagined.
Plans don't always work. When that happens in the office, we look to those motivational phrases enshrined on posters with rainbows and clinging kittens encouraging us to dust ourselves off and persevere.

But when that plan is a long-awaited vacation, failure feels disastrous. For starters, there's little margin for do-overs. The same boss whose office wall is festooned with "Be the Bridge" also expects you back at work on Monday. Then there's the natural disappointment, which leads to second-guessing, which leads to unfortunate exchanges of, um, opinion.

In our case, plans were thwarted by circumstances both within and beyond anyone's control. The St. Lawrence River region also has had a reluctant summer, which is a nice way of saying that we could see our breath as we set off down the river. That was no one's fault. But we began the trip during the full moon, meaning that the tides were larger and stronger than they would be a week later. That was a question of judgment.

In any case, we didn't make our first night's destination by dark, deciding to anchor instead in a barely charted bay about two hours short of our intended harbor. The second day was worse, wet and cold, with choppier waters. We saw our first whales, which buoyed us, but we also grew worried as we neared the village of Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay River . The locals consider it a tricky harbor in good conditions, and these were not.

An initial concern that our GPS had gone wacky eventually was solved after realizing that we actually were moving backward up the river, the combined forces of tides and currents overwhelming the 33-foot Cape Dory.

So we made the tough decision to return to the last most likely harbor, which meant backtracking 30 miles to a marina we'd passed that morning. But a tougher decision loomed.

Or we could change our plans.

No one likes abandoning a plan. Indeed, we regard a good plan as a talisman, as if our forethought and diligence magically will fend off any threat to its existence. We become wedded to a plan's completion, taking chances, pushing limits, doing whatever it takes to make it work. Polar explorer Roald Amundsen once said that "adventure is just bad planning," but it also can be the result of good planning executed against all logic.

So what did we learn from this experience?

For starters, the decision to change plans received as much deliberation as the initial idea. Studying the forecasts, the tide tables and the maps with the idea of exploring every possible option helped everyone arrive at the inevitable conclusion. The fact that my husband and I had been able to help our friends navigate the last worst stretch of the river before it widened into the greater gulf eased our sense of failing them, mostly.

Here's the key: Once we made the decision to change plans, we embraced it wholeheartedly. No second-guessing. No waking to brilliant weather and deciding to go for it, after all.

Back in Tadoussac, we parted ways, having found a bus back to Quebec City and rebooking our plane tickets. Oh, yeah, while changing plans is doable, it does cost more money.

But we all parted friends, they continuing under a less deadline-driven sailing plan, and we returning home with new experiences, greater knowledge and the satisfaction of knowing that there's only one way of assuring that we never fail, and that's by never trying.