Month: April 2019

As I put the final touches on our first video about winter in the Sea of Cortez, I took note of the gray skies, the strong winds, the jackets we donned daily. Only a few short months out from those days, I already feel nostalgic for that fresher air. We may not have been swimming as much, but we spent a lot more time outside, hiking, exploring, picnicking, meandering.

Since March, the temperatures have been slowly climbing. I don’t think the thermometer has even hit 90 degrees F yet (except in our pilothouse, which hit 99.8 today), yet the heat somehow seems compounded by the scorching red and brown hills, the grayish-green scrub clinging to the sandy bluffs, and the bright white blinding sun. Anything left out in the sun gets too hot to touch – our steering wheel, shoes, solar showers. We can’t go barefoot on our teak deck in the middle of the day anymore. In fact, we’ve stopped going out in the middle of the day at all. The UV radiates through even the thickest sunscreen, and the low, prickly shrubs make precious little shade. Our midday siestas and cerpuscular schedules make us feel simultaneously more native and more foreign. We live the life that all desert dwellers live, and yet our dried out skin and cranky demeanors remind us that we are products of a land cloaked in moisture and shade.

And it’s only April. We have just less than two months before we pack our bags and return to the shadow of our cool, green fir trees in order to escape this beautiful but harsh furnace and the hurricanes that may tear through it. We smile at the forecast of clouds this weekend and look for anchorages that will afford plenty of swimming – and shade, if we’re lucky enough to see trees. As the sweat glistens on my fair freckles today and my shirt clings to my salty skin, I won’t lie that it makes us dream of the days when we’ll be plying Alaskan fjords and bundling ourselves up for walks under the cedars, but for now we know that we need to find a way to live in the heat and store up its memory in our bones for the cold days of the future.

Boat Issues: Same alternator problems, plus we’re realizing the need to install our deck shades, which hasn’t really been a priority… until now.

Where Are We Now: After spending a little time in Puerto Escondido with friends, we headed up to Ballandra Bay on Isla Carmen for three nights. We spent the days swimming, catching fish, eating fish, and just being hot. We’re now at Isla Coronados and later heading on to points north on our way to Bahia Concepcion.

What’s New: I haven’t written much yet about our boatschool saga, because it’s been, well, a challenging saga. But what’s new is that Dylan actually declared that he is beginning to like reading books. This is huge. More on this later. Also, fish. We’re excited to be catching fish again. Fresh fish means lots of fresh ceviche and tacos!

Spring has come to the Sea of Cortez. The days are a little hotter, the water a little warmer, and the fish are finally biting. But the biggest difference from the vantage point of our hot teak deck is the crowded anchorages. Long gone are the days of having popular anchorages all to ourselves or for going on hikes or beach walks without seeing another soul. Gone are also the days of getting the prime spot in the anchorage and not worrying about your swinging radius. But while we may have to anchor a little deeper than preferred, or tuck in at the side of an anchorage where we might not have as much wind and wave protection, we glean a benefit from these crowded anchorages that we did not have in the winter: we have a community.

For kids, this means playmates. Friends to explore tidepools and make forts with. To watch movies with and share toys and books with. Age may have a small effect on how they play, but it has no effect on that they play. Age difference is clearly much less important than the simple companionship of other kids. I would never have guessed that our 4 and 6 year old boys would become so attached to twin 9-year old girls we have been boating with. They have quickly become pseudo siblings, or at least cousins, sometimes butting heads but more often enjoying each others’ presence and having company for their shenanigans and explorations. The girls may be a little overwhelmed occasionally with our boys’ energy and intensity, but aren’t we all?

For parents, this means companionship and a little time off from kids. It’s nice to be able to troubleshoot and problem solve with others, and, let’s face it, it’s nice to be able to vent sometimes with others who understand. When we trade kids for an afternoon, it gives us a chance to breathe, to have adult conversation without interruptions. When a neighbor on a big catamaran offered to have the kids over for a movie, the kids jumped at the chance to explore a new boat, and we jumped at the chance to clean our perpetually messy boat. When our friend Norman on a sturdy Nordhavn trawler took Andy on a walk for a long walk with their dog, I was able to get hours of work done on a new video, interrupted only by Dylan giving me periodic narratives of how he and Daddy were doing on their TV wiring project.

For broken boats, this means a army of people ready to help lend a hand, a tool, a skill, or an alternator belt. One blustery afternoon after we had all been beaten up by some nasty (and higher than predicted) west winds that reached up to 35 knots at one point, one boat after another dropped their sails and pulled into the protection of Los Gatos, relieved to be out of the steep waves and strong gusts. When our friends, who were having to transport two boats north in order to put one up in San Carlos to sell, had disappeared from view, we began to worry. Hours later, we saw them in the distance, one boat in tow, both boats getting hammered by the waves and wind. As they pulled into the calmer waters of the anchorage, three dinghies were out waiting to help them anchor safely. A conversation later ensued on the radio about what had happened and different ways to tackle the failure point (a melted exhaust manifold). Boats offered up specialized tools and materials, and a day later, the engine was fixed. And the local panguero, Miguel, who had driven up from Timbabiche to gather our trash and trade for gasoline, when he saw us measuring and comparing alternator belts, went back to his rancho and brought back two belts to see if they were the size we needed. This is our community.

For all cruisers, this simply means the comfort of familiar faces and the opportunity to share experiences, seek advice, and celebrate successes, whether a fish caught or another year around the sun completed. I forgot to take a picture on my birthday, but it was nice to break bread (well, cake) with five other boats in the anchorage at Puerto Los Gatos. We gathered under the newly built thatched roof palapa and ate homemade poke, fruit salad, brownies, and cake while the kids scurried around in the canyons of the red rocks around us making their own “civilization,” as they called it.

We come from all over. Of course, there are many of us from the Pacific Northwest – Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia – seeking out the more temperate climate to warm and dry out our bones. We meet folks from California and Texas, Germany and Austria, the UK and Australia, France and Spain. And as the weather warms, we’re seeing many more Mexican boats. We’ve met families from Mexico City and seen a myriad of megayachts, fishing boats, and charter catamarans, all of whom clearly know how to fish and how to party. An anchorage livens up the minute a Mexican-flagged boat drops its anchor and turns on the music. It bothered me the first time, having been trained on the Northwest philosophy of keeping anchorages quiet and peaceful and turning off even quiet generators by 9:00, but now it makes me smile as I continue to ease into Mexico’s festive culture.

This is our community. It is fluid and changing. But it is a comfort, a support, and a joy for us as we explore this new world. It doesn’t mean that we don’t crave solitude sometimes. We do. But a community – and especially those who become good friends – are so important to our well-being and our enjoyment of this new lifestyle.

Current Boat Issues: Since the addage goes that cruising is just fixing your boat in exotic locations, I thought I would add to each post what mechanical issues we’re dealing with, because there is always at least one. Right now it is that our alternator isn’t working well. When we motor for a few hours, the alternator should be using that time to send juice back to our batteries, which isn’t happening as fast or as much as it should. So even after motoring for hours, we have to turn the generator on for a while to refill our batteries. Why are our batteries getting drained? Because our freezer (circa 1985) is sucking everything out of them, and even our massive solar panels can’t keep up.

Where are we now? Heading north past Loreto, with hopes to spend a few weeks in Bahia Concepcion.

What’s new? I just posted a new video on Youtube (link below) about the passage from Neah Bay to San Francisco. Another one about our winter cruising in the Sea of Cortez is coming soon!

We’ve been back in La Paz a month and four days. We accomplished almost everything we set out to do:

• experience Carneval
• do taxes
• take Spanish classes
• get our residence cards from Ensenada
• socialize with other boaters and boat kids
• visit friends from Washington vacationing here
• get a few blog posts and a video up
• download lots of new books and apps
• provision and prep for two and half months out in the Sea
• and, of course, complete a whole host of boat projects: clean the hull and the deck, fix the forward head, do engine maintenance, fix broken windows, better organize the cockpit, install fishing pole holders and do fishing research, wire up new fans and a charging port, and install a new bilge pump.

Whew. All that is to say that we’re tired. Our month here was full. Full of chores, full of projects, full of people. And it’s been wonderful. Kind of hot, but wonderful.

And now we’re ready to hit the islands again. To slow life down. To explore the underwater world. To catch some fish. To pretend boulders are spaceships. To be back out In the Wilderness.

We’ve just stuffed the boat with food, filled up the fuel tanks, and are now headed north in a beautiful 14 knot wind. The kids are giddy, we are excited, and we’re all looking forward to the turquoise waters, red rocks, and marine animals awaiting us!

I’ll post updates as I can, but data and cell coverage is pretty scarce out there. At least know that I’ll be writing, even if it takes a while to appear online. In the mean time, here’s a link to a video of our trip down the Pacific Coast of Baja. I look back on that difficult trip and realize just how far we’ve come as a family since then. Things still aren’t easy (is parenting young children ever easy?), but I think we’re slowly finding our groove… 10 months in. And that is certainly a reminder that life is all about the journey and how we develop and change as part of that journey. So, here’s to the journey of the next few months and everything that time will bring!