Month: June 2019

We left on our voyage one year ago today. One year in, we have visited three countries, over 30 islands, 15 marinas, and countless anchorages. We’ve plied through glassy waters and 15-foot waves. We’ve seen so many animals that we will only mention the ones that win special prizes: Smallest: No-see-um; Biggest: Blue Whale; Most colorful: Rainbow Wrasse (a small reef fish); Fuzziest: Sea Otter; Scariest: Grizzly Bear; Weirdest: Tube Worm.

There’s general consensus among us that the West Coast of Vancouver Island was a favorite; its deep green forests, multicolored beaches, and foggy low-tide explorations captivated our imaginations. Here in Mexico, Puerto Los Gatos is one of the places that rises to the top for all us with its bright red marshmallow rocks and flat trails. La Paz has not only become a home base, but a second home – a place where we feel comfortable, where we’ve found favorite places and are greeted with smiles of recognition, where we stroll the malecon in the evenings with the city’s families, dancers, scout troops, musicians, and running teams, and feel the joy of life.

I don’t know how much of this first year will make it into the kids’ long-term memories. Dylan may remember details of his emotions and the world’s natural playgrounds that exceed our own. Andy may only retain passing snapshots, images that may become dreamlike in their vagueness. They’re unlikely to remember the bigger evolution of this year, but I have hopes that a few things will stick with them: witnessing humpbacks and gray whales breach and dive in front of us, seeing hundreds of dolphins leaping and twirling in a feeding frenzy, building sandcastles and estuaries, spotting the omnipresent Angelfish and Panamic Sergeant Majors, playing with whale and fish skeletons strewn on rocky beaches, sprinting down the La Paz malecon dodging bikes and roller-bladers and strolling lovers, curling up in the v-berth to listen to bedtime stories.

We’ve embarked on this journey together as a family, but our perceptions of it, the things we enjoy, and the mental states we’re in aren’t always the same. Here are some verbal snapshots of where we are now. The kids’ words are mostly paraphrased versions of things they’ve actually said or what their brains could be thinking. I imagine this is also what they might say if prodded for answers, which they may or may not be willing to give. Tom’s words were dictated to me in a conversation. My words are my own of course. Some were written at a darker time, and some were written after I had a chance to pull my head up, breathe, and take a look around, like pausing in the middle of an open water swim to lift your goggles and appreciate the vast, gorgeous, and powerful world all around you.

Andy:
One year in, I love doing puzzles on the pilothouse floor. I love tracing animals. I love doing math with mommy in the back bedroom. I love talking people’s ears off, especially about whales and dolphins. I want to be a cetologist when I grow up. They study whales. Or maybe an paleontologist because they dig up dinosaurs, which are pretty cool too. So are spiders. And seals. And raccoons. And snakes. I love my new stuffed snake, Spotty, that I saved up my allowance for. I love crawling into bed with mommy and daddy in the middle of night. I tell them I have nightmares, but really I just want to be close to them. Nightmares are when you dream of giant squid.

Dylan:
One year in, I miss trees. I miss my grandparents. I miss house tents to play in. But I love running as fast as I can down really long beaches. And I love finding hermit crabs and building epic sandcastles. Building stuff with Legos and cardboard and duct tape is cool, too. I love hikes, though I’d like them more if there were trees. I’m way more acclimated to the heat in Mexico than the rest of my family. I love building forts, playing games on my tablet, and having movie nights with popcorn. I love jumping around in front of the cat and putting blankets on top of her, but she doesn’t seem to like it (I don’t know why). I don’t love boat school, but I guess science experiments are okay, especially when they explode or I get to use a lever like a catapult. I really just want to sit in mommy’s lap and listen to chapter books for hours before bedtime.

Demon:
Who takes a Himalayan snow cat to Mexico?

Tom:
I’m enjoying the lifestyle so far. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Mexico, the friendly and welcoming people and their willingness to have fun and celebrate anything and everything. I’ve been astounded by a clearly flourishing middle class. I figured I would like the Sea of Cortez, but I’ve really fallen in love with Mexico, and not just because of the Sea. I love exploring food, whether in restaurants, hole-in-the-wall taco joints, grocery stores, or markets. I’m also loving the frustrating challenge of fishing. I had anxieties about the number of significant breakages we would have, and I have been pleasantly surprised that the boat’s been doing really well. The heat has definitely been a problem for me, and I’m surprised that Dylan isn’t thriving the way we thought he would. I’m happy to be taking a break from medicine, but hopefully when I go back to it, I can go back reinvigorated with my passion for it renewed. I’m really excited and optimistic about the upcoming years.

Sandi:
One year in, I love hiking and exploring and learning a new language. But one year in, I still sometimes wonder if we’ve done the right thing. If leaving friends and family and a “normal” life to embark on this Pacific odyssey was the right decision. One year in, I still have dreams about work, dredging up the nagging guilt of leaving a job that I loved, even if the mental break was sorely needed. I would love to turn myself into a writer, but I live with the anxiety that lack of official training, internet, and time for writing and research means it may never happen. And it feeds a feeling of worthlessness that I have had to push away constantly. Perhaps this anxiety would be eased if I got more gratification out of teaching or parenting my children, but when daily life poses a constant flood of challenges – of how not to butt heads with Dylan, what tactic to use to get Andy to listen, what consequence to impose for inappropriate behavior – I am not only taxed, but just want to get as far away from my children as I can (which, on our boat, is about 25 feet, and I can still hear them).

But I realize that all of those things I struggle with would be the same back on land. We would still have a strong-willed 6 year old and a precocious but clingy 4 year old. We would still struggle with parenting and discipline methods. We would likely still struggle with anxiety and depression, especially if we had to undo all the things we put in place to make this life possible. There is no guarantee that anything would be any better if we were on land, and so instead of moving backward to an unplanned unknown, we move forward into the planned unknown and continue to have conversations as a family about how to make it smoother. I carry a little plaque with me that my parents gave me years ago that says: “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we will find it not.” And if we can’t find the beautiful here, then we will not find it on land.

There have been plenty of days when I have lost sight of the Beautiful, when I have forgotten our Why. But I am reminded when I see Andy dig his fascinated little face into his whale book, when I see Dylan build civilizations out of nothing but sand and rocks and sticks, when I see Tom fully engrossed in his new fishing hobby, when I see myself having full conversations in my broken but improving Spanish, when I see the kids excited about going to the place where sushi comes from. I see in all these things our Why – our deliberate choice to face the challenges of an alternative lifestyle for a while – and I know we’ve made the right decision.

When I have told Mexicans I’ve met about the life we are living, a very typical response has been: “Que una vida bonita!” What a beautiful life! My response has often been, in my limited Spanish, “Well, it’s nice but very difficult with two young children.” But what I really need to do is learn the right Spanish words for this response: “Yes, it is beautiful with all it’s ups and downs, with all its discoveries and disappointments, with all its happiness and hardships, with its moments of pure joy and brutal desperation. It is beautiful that we can spend time together as a family even if not every moment is beautiful.” And that’s probably what they mean; I’ve just had to discover it for myself.

A few select moments from the past year:

I wrote up this destination article for the Kids4Sail newsletter but thought it would also make a good post as it goes into more depth about one of the locations mentioned in my last post.

The Sea of Cortez is already a special place with its turquoise anchorages, white sand beaches, and barren red cliffs. One might think there’s danger of boredom in coming across similar backdrops week after week, but something new always seems to reveal itself in each new spot. A good trail, a painted rock, a boulder that your kids turn into a spaceship. And then there are those anchorages that rise to the top and become favorites, the ones whose names will endure in your memory long after the others have melted together. We’ve come across a few special places like this in the Sea of Cortez, one of which was Caleta San Juanico, a bay about 25 nautical miles north of Loreto on the east coast of the Baja Peninsula. In the end, it was more than just the swimming, hikes, and amazing geological formations that solidified this place in our long-term memories, but the people with whom we shared it and the friendships we fostered at a time when we needed it most.

On a still afternoon at the end of April, we motored north from Isla Coronados in glassy waters. As we approached Caleta San Juanico, the water began to change color, a sort of brownish-orange that made me think of churned up mud or a polluted harbor.
“Are we in shallow water? How’s our depth?” I asked Tom.
“No,” he said, glancing at the chart plotter. “We should still be in at least 300 feet, and the depth sounder isn’t even registering, so probably even more.”
We motored through it, dropping anchor in a clear-watered south anchorage in anticipation of some southerly winds. But by dinner our plates and glasses were sliding across the table in the easterly swell and we decided to make a break for the north anchorage a few miles away before the sun lost its light entirely. It couldn’t be worse what we were already in. Strike one for the south anchorage.

We nestled up to a large rocky island sticking straight out of the water in order to block as much as we could of the easterly swell. To confirm our good decision to move, the water lit up like the night sky with bioluminescence unlike any we have ever seen. Rays and fish glittered under the water. Plankton sparkled like stars, and the crest of the waves crashing on the rocks glowed green in the darkness. The small island did its job, though the sound of surf crashing on its surrounding rocks and reefs did little to lull us to sleep. Nor did our boat position as we swung around with the nighttime westerly wind, stern to the rocky island. Tom sat up in the cockpit long after the rest of us were asleep to make sure we weren’t going to end up on the rocks.

The next morning, after a brief paddle with the kids around the rocky island to look at what turned out to be the largest number of reef fish I had seen in one place, we watched the water suddenly turn opaque. The massive orange patch we had motored through the day before now stretched across the bay as the algae obscured our view of anything more than a few inches below the surface. Swimming or snorkeling became unappealing. Even fishing seemed questionable. Some land-based visitors invited us on a glass bottom boat tour they had arranged, but there was nothing to see except murky brown below us. We were disappointed and decided to head north for our goal of Bahia Concepcion where we would wait for friends behind us to catch up.

If we were already tired from sleepless nights in a windy anchorage and weeks on end with two young boys who were pressing on our every nerve, the increasing heat and still air over the next week in Bahia Concepcion only served to make us crankier and more desperate. Aborting our spring mission, we decided to head back to La Paz three weeks early, planning to intercept our friends in Caleta San Juanico on the way south.

Departing at 8:00 am from Bahia Santo Domingo at the mouth of Bahia Concepcion, we motored the long 46 miles that would get us back to San Juanico before dinnertime. As we motored into the south anchorage and dropped our hook between our friends on Saarelill and Pakia Tea, we received a welcoming party of waves and invitations to come to the beach to join everyone as soon as we were ready. As we set the anchor, two more kid boats we knew putted into the anchorage: Arrow and Walkabout. Another kidboat we had only met online, Hinterland, was nestled in the easternmost part of our line of boats. Six kid boats – with thirteen kids from 4 months to 11 years old – had just taken over the south anchorage of Caleta San Juanico.

Except for a mass exodus to the north anchorage the following afternoon when the swell in the south became untenable (strike two for the south anchorage), the next few days were full. We took a dinghy caravan over to check out some sea caves and any fish we could spot in the now-clear water. We pulled our dinghies up on shore and went for a hike down a riverbed, bright green and fragrant where there was still water and brown and dusty where the water petered out. Marble cliffs with strains of agate rose up to our right.

We had a bonfire on the beach that evening, and Pakia Tea introduced us all to stick bread – bread dough wrapped around a stick, covered in olive oil and garlic, and roasted over a fire. Best thing ever, we all decided. We parents sat around the fire chatting while the kids ran around the beach and the rocks in the dark.

The wind was supposed to blow from the north and east the next day. Korvessa was somewhat low on fuel, and we were feeling pressured by the rare opportunity to sail. Common sense would have said it was time to leave in the morning. But after we put our exhausted kids to bed at 10:30 that night, smelling like campfire and still talking about stick bread, Tom asked “So, what are you thinking about leaving tomorrow?”

“Well,” I replied, “I would really value some more time with friends, but if we have to leave, then we have to leave.”
“I think we needed this more than we realized,” Tom said, in a nod to the fact that this is our tribe. We need each other out here. The chance to have conversations with other parents who can empathize and help problem solve had already calmed our stressed hearts.
“Yes, definitely.”
“I think we should stay,” he said.
“I would like that,” I replied.

And so we stayed. We stayed for a short hike to a local farm where we bought eggs and goat cheese and where the kids shrieked in joy at the goats, chickens, horses, and peacocks. We stayed for a massive sandcastle-civilization building competition in which the kids all paired up on a sandbank to create a vast array of sandcastles, complete with crops, trees, and moats. We stayed for fishing and swimming. We stayed for a birthday party on Sunday night at which a fellow boat kid turned 6 years old. We brought massive amounts food to the potluck, though the kids were more focused on the birthday cake and marshmallows. We talked about our plans for the summer and plans for the future, our boat problems and boat successes, homeschooling and parenting issues, fishing, alternators, and mental health. We stayed for the chance to connect, to breathe a little more deeply, and to have adult conversations while the children played.

Caleta San Juanico has everything you could ask for: cool rock formations, fossils, sea caves, bright reef fish, hikes as far as your feet want to take you, and a farm with eggs, cheese, and even veggies in the winter and spring. It has reefs for spearfishing and snorkeling and gorgeous sand for running and building. We forgot to leave a token at the Cruiser’s Shrine in the north anchorage, which is worth a visit, but we’ll be back. Its protection from wind and waves wasn’t superior, but the north anchorage was adequate, even if the south anchorage struck out in our book.

But it wasn’t all this that made this place so memorable. It was being surrounded by friends, hearing the laughter and shrieks of joy from our kids, and spending time with our tribe when we really needed it. It was a microcosm of the totality of cruising life: supportive people, beautiful surroundings, and lasting friendships