Sailing Korvessa

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Exactly two years ago today we embarked on a journey that would take us around the Pacific. We did not know then the challenges we would face. We did not know then that the world would close itself off, that so many hearts and minds would close themselves off to our shared humanity, and that we would be navigating a world so different than that rainy June day two years ago.

And today – two years after friends and family knifed through our dock lines and stood loyally on the dock in the pouring rain waving goodbye until we passed out of sight – we begin our journey home. The passage to Hawaii was a refugee passage, a forced voyage that had never been intended but was our only refuge in a world closing down around us. And we’ve loved Hawaii, perhaps except for the heat. And for all that we couldn’t leave the island of Oahu, we have managed to take hikes in its jungles, to boogie-board in its warm waves, to eat lots of poke and poi and Kalua pig, and for a time experience the beautiful life and culture on this remarkable island. When the words come to me, I will write more about the five weeks we spent here, full of joy at being reunited as a family, full of new friendships, and – not least – full of seeping sweat from the constant heat and humidity.

But today we start our passage to Alaska. Alaska is not our physical home, not where our address is or where we are registered to vote. It is not where our family is. But it is the Pacific Northwest, and I feel a lump in my throat and wetness welling in my eyes as I contemplate a return to a land full of rain and cold and magnificent dense forests of Douglass firs and Lodgepole pines, of blue spruce and red cedars.

Alaska was also my home for three wonderful years as a child. It is where I learned to ski, camp, hike, adventure, and use all my senses to smell the change of seasons. It is where I learned to appreciate darkness and light. It is where I learned to write, guided by my fifth-grade teacher, Natascha Ginsburg, who had us write every genre of poetry and prose in our still childlike, unsure handwriting. It took me a full seven years of life in Colorado to finally admit that I was no longer an Alaskan. And yet Alaska wedged itself so deeply into my being, that returning to its mosquito-dense forests, muddy trails smelling sweetly of rotting leaves, and fjords full of low gray clouds feels like coming home.

We have taken heed of Gandalf’s wisdom. In the past two years, despite the challenges and surprises, we have done so much with the time given to us. We have filled it with friends, food, flora, and fauna (you can thank Mrs. Ginsburg, for introducing me to the fun of alliteration!). We have filled it with tears and agony, love and support, new languages and old alternators. I find I have no sadness or regrets as we begin our slow journey home, because we have experienced so much and grown so much in the last two years. Our Pacific Voyage may have a different loop than we had anticipated, but what a loop it has been. And we not only have the next three months to live fully, but to contemplate how we can live and learn in the time that is given us after that. How to build a rich, full life in our Northwest home, how to raise thoughtful, compassionate, and inspired children, and how to do our part in building a welcoming and vibrant community and world.

Informational Addendum:

• Shortly after writing this, we learned that the surf is really big today in the Ala Wai Harbor entrance, so we will need to keep an eye on it and depart when it’s safe. If today isn’t safe, it might not be until tomorrow or Friday.
• The voyage to Kodiak should take 17-19 days. Once we leave, you can follow our journey on https://share.garmin.com/Korvessa.
• The kids are back in Washington with their grandparents. We discussed taking the kids on this passage and strongly considered it, but decided not to because it is likely to be a more difficult passage weather and wave-wise. As our friends Behan and Jaime on Totem say, “suffering is optional.” The kids will be able to have special time with their grandparents, Tom and I can focus on sailing and resting, and I will for the first time be able to undertake a passage without kids, which is important for my own skill building and confidence. (Tom and I sailed alone together from San Francisco to LA, but we were at anchor every night).
• Our time in Alaska will be relatively short – max two months before we catch some south winds back to Washington – and we will focus our time on south-central Alaska, specifically the Kenai Peninsula and Prince William Sound. Most of Southeast Alaska will have to wait for summer vacations in the future.
• ps. If you comment here and it doesn’t show up, it’s because I need to approve it, which I can’t do until I have internet access again.
• Thanks for all your well wishes! Onward to Alaska!

I first started to write this post almost two years ago, shortly after Tom did his first long passage with friends from Neah Bay to San Francisco. But now that I have provisioned for countless passages (including a 3-week ocean passage), a journey through remote south Pacific Islands, and a pandemic, I’m a lot better placed to to write about how we did it and what we’ve learned. Here’s our take on short and long passage provisioning, deep provisioning, and pandemic provisioning, including some tips for shopping in Mexico and a few links to gurus who have more experience than we do.

Passage Provisioning

My first attempt at planning the the food for a long passage scared into me into hyper-organized maniac mode. Our kids’ voracious appetites were already draining our galley stores every few days even with periodic access to groceries, so the prospect of meal planning for five tall men on a potentially ten-day passage from Neah Bay to San Francisco was daunting. But you have to start somewhere, and Tom and I started on a pine-shaded beach just outside of Winter Harbour on the west coast of Vancouver Island, brainstorming ideas and jotting down notes on a little pad of butterfly-shaped paper while the kids played tag with the surf.

I then dug into my boating cookbooks for any tips and tricks that might be useful, such as: people drink more pop and eat more snacks on passages, prepare simple ready-to-go meals for the first few days as people get their sea legs, and make sure everyone knows what’s available for each meal so that one person doesn’t help themselves to all of the next week’s dinner ingredients. I tapped into to a lesson I gleaned from Nancy Erley during my instructional week on Tethys (http://tethysoffshore.com/): start the planning with each dinner’s protein, and then you can mix and match with your vegetables and preferred starch. I also asked my friend Thomas, who had sailed to Hawaii and back a few years ago, what he had craved and eaten on voyage: “Meat,” he said, “and we really enjoyed our Yellow Food Night of mac n cheese, creamed corn, and banana pudding.”

Holding back a little gag, Tom said he would forgo the yellow food, but he really liked Thomas’ insight that they craved meat. When we looked down at our brainstorming list, 90% of the meals included beef. Hmm. Because we didn’t want a boat full of constipated men, we changed our tack, took Nancy’s advice, and honed in on the protein for each dinner. What we ended up was an excellent list of meals that could either be heated straight out of the freezer, compiled from easy-to-reach ingredients, and – importantly – contained a variety of proteins and fiber. I put together a menu of what they had available along with instructions on what to add. Freezer space was at a premium, so some of the meals included only the cooked meat and sauce, but required a can of beans, tomatoes, and/or some broth be added upon heating, thereby allowing more pre-prepared meals to fit into our tiny freezer. Importantly, I also included a document mapping out where everything could be found!

But before the food could be eaten, ingredients had to be bought and prepared. A big task, but a fun one. A couple big shopping trips and a few hours in a (very fragrant) kitchen got it all done. The next task was to fit it all on the boat. Also a big task, but not nearly as fun. It did make it more fun to think of it like a complex puzzle, figuring out what shapes fit most efficiently where. I even moved most of my spices into containers that fit upright in one of our galley drawers and then labeled the tops. This makes me sound like an uber-organized freak, but one of the keys to provisioning is to use space as efficiently as possible. It should also be noted that we lived aboard for years and had most of our spices willy-nilly in either huge bins or random baggies, so this hyper-organized state was not exactly natural for us.

The results: nobody starved. So, success. Maybe too much success. On day one, as they nibbled at their first meal, probably still getting their sea-legs and sea-stomachs, Mike said something along the lines of, “Jesus, Tom, tell your wife that we’re definitely not going to go hungry on this trip!” But by day two, their appetites were building, and by the end of the passage, the men were wolfing down everything and scraping every last bit meat and sauce out of their bowls. And they all thought they’d be losing weight and getting scurvy. Ha!

On the many shorter passages we took (2-3 days) down the coast of Baja and in the Sea of Cortez, we found that we weren’t overly hungry in those first few days and found ourselves nibbling more. We would eat something comforting for breakfast, crackers, salami, cheese, and fruit for lunches and snacks, and something warm and EASY for dinner.

I followed a similar plan in prepping for the 3-4 week passage from Mexico to French Polynesia, but it did require more careful planning when it came to the fresh provisions and the storage of protein. I planned the meals, calculated how much would be needed of various vegetables and fruits and how long they would last, and prepared documents of the “menu” and the meals available. After shopping, cooking, and freezing, a few (3) pre-prepared meals went into the freezer, along with a bag of pre-cooked chicken, carne asada, ground beef, frozen peas, and some breakfast sandwiches.

The fresh stuff was a careful calculus, based on buying the freshest and longest-lasting foods and then storing at least some of them in the fridge. Here’s the fresh stuff I sent for three men on a 3-week passage: 20 oranges, 20 apples, 20 Roma tomatoes, 20 limes, 15 bananas, 11 sweet peppers, 10 potatoes, 10 carrots, 10 avocados, 10 cucumbers, 3 heads of romaine lettuce, 2 heads of cabbage, 2 sweet potatoes, 1 bunch of celery, 2 heads of garlic, 3 bunches of scallions, and 2 bunches of cilantro. They also had alfalfa seeds for sprouting and about 50 eggs. The lettuce, scallions, cilantro, and half the avocados and apples went into the fridge, along with all the cheese and lunch meat. (BTW, I was horrified when I discovered that the cucumbers never made it onto the boat, and I ended up eating and giving away a lot of cucumbers over the next three weeks in La Cruz.)

Brian took over the galley, and the success of the provisioning for this trip was due in no small part to his unspoken mantra that “dinner will be made from whatever is about to go off.” Not only did very little go off, but they didn’t even open a can until about two days out of Nuku Hiva. And Roberto said that I even managed to put enough ingredients on board to satisfy his Mexican food cravings. I call that success.

Provisioning for the unexpected journey from French Polynesia to Hawaii was not as easy for Tom. He was only granted permission for a short stay in Nuku Hiva, was allowed only one visit to shore per week, and many groceries were very expensive ($125 for a paper bag that was 3/4 full!). Luckily, the boat was well stocked with everything except fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables, so, he stocked up to the extent possible on those items and got under way. Fresh fruit at the markets was quite inexpensive and relied on that heavily. They also planned on diving into the canned meat stores on the boat as we couldn’t afford much fresh meat ($100 for very modest sized frozen steaks). They did get a little tired of pasta along the way, not feeling up to digging into the couscous, quinoa, and Bulgar wheat that stood ignored in the cabinets. Apparently, Jake made some pretzels and fresh bread with the last of the flour, which were a huge hit. One of the highlights of this particular passage was using the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day book, which made it very easy to bake interesting breads every day. A serving of fresh bread became a huge morale boost. They would drink the dregs of the shitty beer (thanks to being brewed in 95 degree heat) and eat the fresh, fragrant bread, a simple but enjoyable event to look forward to on a difficult passage when the world was closing down around them.

In sum, here are a few important tips for passage provisioning:

• Start planning with each dinner’s protein
• Plan easy to prepare, gentle meals for those first few queasy days
• Hunger will increase over time
• Plan a variety of meals and ingredients available, so that meals can be changed up depending on conditions
• Have a detailed list of what is available for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and for new crew, a list of where everything is)
• Have a bin of snacks and drinks that can be accessed at any time
• Buy the freshest and longest-lasting fruits and vegetables possible and store them properly (get more details on that on the Boat Galley blog. Here is one article by Lin Pardey about storing fruits and veggies, who also happened to write a book on this topic called The Care and Feeding of Sailing Crew)
• Examine your provisions daily to check what needs to be eaten, and turn the eggs over every few days. We loved our awesome egg containers, but in the tropics, they began to mold, so be sure to poke holes in the containers to allow air circulation.
• Pro-tip that I didn’t learn about until later: Identify a special meal or dessert that can be something that the crew look forward to for a passage.
• Another pro-tip: Have a few things to look forward to for milestone points. I put away a bottle of champagne and some good smoked salmon for the Equator Crossing, but a lot of people get even more elaborate than that.

Deep Provisioning

Deep provisioning is trickier than passage provisioning, as you’re having to think much longer term about what how much you will consume and what you will need. I deep-provisioned for a 7-month jaunt across the South Pacific, knowing that many groceries were very expensive and many items that we were used to having simply wouldn’t be available (except, perhaps, in Tahiti or Fiji). Unfortunately, Covid-19 halted our South Pacific plans, but the provisioning for the passage did happen. Here are a few important points I learned along the way:

• Most importantly: DO THE MATH on how much you will consume. Make a spreadsheet and calculate what you will need based on your consumption rate and length of time you need provisions for. A pitfall to avoid is that of looking at the piles of stuff you have and saying “well, that’s gotta be enough, right?” Wrong. Do the math. When I calculated we would need 10 jars and peanut butter and 7 jars of jam over 7-month period, it seemed ludicrous, but we consume it at a high rate and didn’t expect to come across affordable peanut butter until we hit New Zealand.
• Check ALL your provisions, not just your “food.” I took stock of all our spices, baking supplies, vinegars, oils, hot sauces, and so on, and stocked up on those things I didn’t think would be easy to find (wasabi, anyone?).
• Check blogs and websites for information about what you can and can’t get in your destinations, such as Terrapin’s about provisioning for the South Pacific. I learned that condiments and alcohol are extremely expensive in the South Pacific, so I made sure to stock up on things like ketchup, relish, mayo, and so on. Unfortunately, I also learned that flour and rice are plentiful, so I didn’t stock up, and guess what Tom and the boys ran out of on their passage to Hawaii (which was an unplanned passage)?
• Another pitfall: make a complete list of where everything is. Though I made a summary list for the guys’ passage, I neglected to make it as complete as it should have been, so they had trouble finding some things that had been buried deeper (chicken bouillon, extra sushi rice, popcorn kernels, and the wasabi paste that I had been so careful to buy but forgot where I put it).

Pandemic Provisioning

It turns out that our deep provisioning I did in Mexico set the boat up to be able to weather a pandemic pretty well. Though the boys ran out of most fresh stuff on their passage north to Hawaii, they were under no threat at all of hunger or starvation. And when the kids and I came to Hawaii to reunite with Tom, I only had to plan out what fresh things (and booze!) we would need to weather our quarantine, as the boat was already full stocked with almost everything else, thanks to careful deep provisioning that was expected to last several months.

We watched over Facebook as our friends in Mexico and other locations prepared for the lockdown there. And they did it following the same principles that we all follow for passage and deep provisioning. Our friends on Totem wrote a great post on this topic:

https://www.sailingtotem.com/2020/03/provisioning-for-a-pandemic.html

Most importantly, remember that food isn’t something that you consume to survive. Food is soulful. It is pleasure. Be sure to provision for the things you’ll want and not just those things you’ll need, whether that be Nutella, hot sauce, a special fish rub, and so on.

Be prepared for the Unexpected. The Unexpected happened, and we weathered it very well due to careful and planned deep provisioning. One of the things Tom was grateful for – when he had so many new things to worry about – is that he didn’t have to worry about food. He had to worry about diesel, boat parts, getting to a safe harbor, etc, but not about food. We set ourselves up for flexibility with deep provisioning, and it gave us options. For example, Tom could have sailed straight to Hawaii instead of stopping in Nuku Hiva, and nobody would have starved. One of our mantras in this uncertain time has become “Make choices that increase your options, not decrease them.” In this uncertain time, provisioning is not unlike preparing for an emergency. Careful provisioning, along with other preparations and maintenance, have helped us weather this emergency and new world.

Addendum for those provisioning in Mexico

We’ve had numerous people ask us about the food options in Mexico, so as a short addendum to the provisioning information, here’s a summary of our findings:

• In major cities, you can find absolutely everything you want or need, sometimes more. One grocery store in San Jose del Cabo dropped our jaws with its selection: a massive cheese section, an organic vegetable section larger than our first house, and wines and beers and specialty foods from all over the world. At a price. La Paz also had a wide selection of good grocery stores. There was a Chedraui and a Soriana within a 20-minute walk of Marina de la Paz, though the Soriana Hiper out at Plaza de la Paz was superior and well-worth the Uber to get there.
• My favorite places to get vegetables and meats, though, in both La Paz and La Cruz were the local street markets and small neighborhood markets. In La Paz, Mercado Bravo offered the best fruits, vegetables, meats, and seafood we could find. In La Cruz, the Wednesday vegetable market was plentiful, and the local tiendas had almost everything you might need. For more exotic things or more choices, a 20-minute bus ride into Bucerias to the Mega, Chedraui, or the fancier La Comer was an easy trip.
• In tiny towns like San Evaristo and Agua Verde, we were able to get the basics like potatoes, onions, tomatoes, and sometimes fruit (plus an endless selection of packaged cookies and chips).
• All grocery stores had a selection of lactose free milk, UHT milk, and powdered milk, which made my digestive system very happy.
• I was disappointed with the selection of cheeses available, as most are soft and not to my liking. Sharp cheddar was hard to come by and became one of the things I missed most.

It isn’t often you get the joy and horror of experiencing a Kafkaesque dream in real life. The walk down empty hallways with closed doors. The lingering-too-long silent glance of the one person you pass. Then one blink, and everything is back to normal. That was our brief existence arriving in Honolulu on Tuesday, in an attempt to come home to our boat and reunite with Tom.

The mere 40 of us on the plane were escorted off ten at a time. As we stepped off the jetway, men in army uniforms took our temperature and directed us down a makeshift aisle, where we went through checkpoints to confirm our quarantine locations, phone numbers, and compliance with the state mandated 14-day quarantine. But it went too fast. Five minutes only, and we were following signs to baggage claim. But everybody else had disappeared. Where did they go? We walked down empty hallways. Empty escalators. We stopped to admire a stuffed pineapple in a dark, closed tourist shop. We followed the signs outside and walked down an empty covered sidewalk. On lone soul, a uniformed pilot, walked toward us, face covered with a protective mask. His eyes followed the kids as they skipped down the sidewalk after a 6-hour motionless flight.

We arrived in an empty room with still, silver baggage carousels lined up one after the other. Thirty-one of them. All still, expect for carousel 26, where my bag rotated slowly around in a circle. The only bag. A little girl about six looked at us. She didn’t respond to my smile, because I had forgotten that my smile was covered up with a mask. But she looked at the kids with a clear yearning to want to come and talk, or play, or engage in some way. But she didn’t, paralyzed perhaps by the same fear that is keeping my kids from getting anywhere near people. I picked up our bag and headed out to the curb. One family waited on a bench and one guard stood watch, but otherwise it was empty and silent. There were no taxis, no shuttles, no traffic. Just the dark gray-brown of shaded cement. Only the occasional dark car driving by looking for their loved ones, ready to whisk them away to their designated place of quarantine.

Our expected car showed up, and Danny’s immediate smile and Aloha snapped us out of the Kafka scene. We piled into the car and drove into the bright sunlight. People ran through parks, walked their dogs, roller bladed on sidewalks. Surfers littered the waves to our right, and kids splashed in the calm waves of protected lagoons. Danny pulled up in front of Hawaii Yacht Club, where Tom was waiting for us. We kissed through our face-masks and hugged for a long time, while Danny patiently idled the car with the kids inside. We released our grip when we saw another car driving down the one-way aisle. We quickly grabbed our bags, helped the kids out of the car, said our farewells to Danny, and maneuvered ourselves and our bags onto Korvessa, our home.

Back to real life. Sort of. Except that real-life for us is to be observed from the deck of our boat for the next 14 days. We expected it. The biggest uncertainty is how long we can stay at our current location. We thought we’d be able to stay when I arranged this over three weeks ago, but then had been told 12 hours before Tom’s arrival that we would have to leave once the kids and I arrived. There have been one or two vocal club members who seem to think that our mere presence on the island has brought plague to them all; other club members took an informal poll and want to let us to stay. If we had received word from other marinas, we would have been happy to move to another dock or mooring ball (still are happy to do that), but nobody will return our calls or emails. And so, like it or not, Hawaii Yacht Club has us until we have another place to go.

Hawaii has just extended its quarantine and stay-at-home order until May 31. Alaska has recently extended its same orders until May 19. And British Columbia doesn’t look like it’s going to open its borders or its restrictions on recreational boating anytime soon. And so we wait.

We’ll be waiting with books and games and movies. We’ll be waiting with attempts to exercise on the bow of the boat. We’ll be waiting with plenty of tasks to do to get the boat ready for another long passage. And we’ll be waiting with an appreciation of being together again, of being home again, and of being reunited in a Kafka-esque world that we no longer know. But we know each other, and we’re waiting together now.

Searching desperately for a reason to get out of bed every morning (other than kids pouncing on me in the wee hours) and trying to identify some goal or purpose to get through this Groundhog Day life, I have started writing our book in earnest, complete with the stories that may have made us cry at the time, but will hopefully be the punchline of jokes and stories told round the campfire years down the road. For a little humorous inspiration, I started watching David Sedaris’ Masterclass on Storytelling and Humor. He starts early on by saying “Everything’s funny, eventually,” and proceeds to tell us a series of stories that, at the time, must have been horrifying and embarrassing, but in retrospect make you smile, chuckle, snort, or just repeat “Oh my goodness” (or something more explicit) over and over.

Luckily – as you will have learned from the last post – Tom is one of those people who can see the humor in the moment, or at least as long as there isn’t an immediate emergency to deal with, like, say, sinking. And in the midst of a world of uncertainty, Tom was even able to find the humor in the 95-degree environment that was making him miserable: I was definitely in a cranky and irritable mood today.  8ft waves on a 5 second period right on the beam, requiring all the hatches to be closed and roasting in the heat was mostly to blame.  No beer available either to take the edge off my foul mood. I also didn’t get enough sleep the last 2 nights. The cat’s food from yesterday was full of maggots, care of the tropics.  Rashes that persist and multiply? Tropics. Constantly dehydrated with 90-degree tap water or 70-degree fridge water to drink? Tropics. Home-brewed beer tastes like shit? Tropics.  Sprouts go moldy before they finish sprouting? Tropics. Stinky clothes that were clean yesterday? Tropics. Two day old cat litter with maggots? Tropics.  Sunburn because sunscreen won’t adhere to my wet sweaty flesh? Tropics. I was in a mood to cut down every palm tree I ever saw for the rest of my life. Give me a home… where the Eskimos roam… and the sky is dark and cloudy all day!  (sing it with me!)

That was 13 days ago, and I haven’t heard him complain about the heat in at least five days, so I think they have finally made it into cooler promised land. Not that we ever expected Hawaii to be that promised land. Images of sitting in cold anchorages in Alaska is what has fueled his motivation for the past month, but if Hawaii is willing to take the temperatures down a notch (83 F) from those of French Polynesia (93 F), he’ll take it. Every degree is a gift.

If Tom made his dislike of the tropics known in that last rant, then Korvessa is making her own dislikes and needs known in this next one. I don’t think Tom meant this to be a poem, but I am turning it into one, and it shall be entitled “Day 51 at Sea, or Rants from a Fed-Up Ketch“. Bonus points for other great titles you put in the comments!

Last night one of Tinker’s securing lines broke.  I fixed it.
Today the vang broke.  I fixed it.
Today the SSB modem broke.  I fixed it.
Today the chart plotter broke and erased all info and placed our boat south of Burkino Fasa on the African coast.  I fixed it.
Today the helm seat broke, with me on it.  I didn’t fix it. I got a huge bruise in the fall.  I punched the mizzen mast.

And from thousands of miles away in our isolation cell here in Anacortes, to top off the many things we will laugh about in the future (can you hear my voice squeak with withheld tears as I write that), we have lost the remote control to the TV (to one of those modern “smart” TVs that doesn’t actually have any real buttons, I might add). Any of you with small kids will understand what a disaster this is. Or maybe you’re among the parents who wisely don’t allow TV time in the morning and carefully control content and time. I am not one of those parents. At least not right now. After experimenting with different times of day to write, I finally settled on 6:00 to 6:45 am, which was the only time of day that I have been able to successfully hide from my kids, thanks to the wondrous invention of the TV. Unfortunately, that is no longer an option. One child crawled into my bed at 6:11 a.m. and said “Mommy, I can’t watch TV, so I’m going to watch you write.” Yeah, right. He did leave, but I can hear him making whale sounds through the wall. The other child is now curled up against me and attempting to hold onto my left arm like a beloved stuffy. I am now typing with one hand. At least he is not making sounds.

Aha! We found the remote after about five hours of searching, which is the sole reason I am able to sit here locked in my parents’ guest bedroom and finish up this post. (Oops, never mind. I was just interrupted. Twice. Three times. That’s it, I need a lock.) I am clearly not going to be able to edit or revise, but you all like nice, raw writing anyway, right?

There will be so many stories we will have from this adventure, so many memories. Many are so good that they will bring smiles to our faces without even trying: kids jumping on the fore-deck while we bounce over waves, beach fires with friends, finding whale bones on the beach, watching breaching whales from the boat. Others, not so much: Demon pooping on the bed right in front of us? Staring in horror at a son who seemed to have turned into a car, because those were the only sounds he would make? The entire bin of Lego and toys spewing all over the v-berth and galley due to a 35-knot gust that knocked us on our side? Dylan puking all over me within the first hour of a 3-day passage? No personal space, ever. We’ll tell stories about those things, too, and hopefully get a laugh out of friends and ourselves. Because everything’s funny, eventually.

---

Informational Addendum: The guys seem on track to arrive in Honolulu on Saturday sometime. After looking at weather and currents, they have wisely decide to take the slightly longer windward (north) route around the islands in order to have more consistent winds and swell than what they would encounter on the lee side of the islands. The strong winds coming in over the next few days are predicted to cause some strong winds and confused seas around South Point (on the Big Island) and some nasty-looking gap winds whipping through the Alenuihaha Channel, which would result in a very difficult, uncomfortable, and potentially dangerous last 48 hours. So around the top they go.

Once they get to the dock in Waikiki, they will hopefully be able to get some beer, pizza, and a very very long sleep (pretty sure that’s the order they want things in). Roberto will fly out on Monday. The kids and I will fly in on Tuesday. And while we complete our 14-day quarantine together, we’ll work on cajoling and repairing Korvessa and all her tough but tired parts. We don’t know what lies ahead after that: a little time to explore Hawaii by car? Or by boat? Will be there for three weeks? Four? Seven? We don’t know. What we’re hoping is that, when the time is right, we’ll fly the kids back to grandparents for a few weeks and take off on the 2,200 nautical mile trip north to Alaska!

So reads the title of the email I just got from Tom, with instructions to post it on our blog. Here is his direct account of the past 24 hours:

The log entry for today at 7N 147W shall show that we continue on, where the trade winds are supposed to be, in beam winds of 20 knots and angry seas of 10 feet from 2 different directions.  Beam winds…  Sounds nice eh?  Sheets eased to allow for a gentle flowing air motion across your non-stressed sails as you adjust your heading to whatever course you desire as you sail a rhumb line to the nearest palm-frond island of your choosing… 

Bullshit!

“Fair winds and FOLLOWING SEAS” is the traditional sailor’s parting phrase that one bestows on a voyaging friend.  “Fair winds and beam seas” is what you might passively-aggressively say with a smile, to your ex-inlaws or the tax man.  It’s not as nice as it sounds. In our beam winds & seas we have as much canvas up as we can stand, causing the boat to heel at unnatural angles.  We do this in order to avoid the “death roll” of being side on to the waves without a massive press of canvas to slow the roll.  We are learning to live on the wall.  Ocean blue is the new black. The port wall is the new floor. 

My crew Roberto and Jake are sick in the head.  They’ve both sailed enough ocean miles to think that this is normal. 35 degrees of heel in the bigger waves does not bother them. Occasional “sneaker waves” crash over the top of the pilothouse roof.  I think they suffer from some kind of Stockholm syndrome.  Have I been too kind as their captor?  Are they learning to love this motion and not desire escape?  Our Himalayan Snow cat “Demon” on the other hand, sharpens her grudge daily.  She doesn’t like living on the wall in the hot and humid tropics.  She is currently refining her “dead cat impression”, seeming to lay lifeless on the low side of the boat with an expression that says, “adopt me into your land-bound home now, save me from this life afloat, do it before it’s too late!” She remains lifeless only until a can of chicken is opened, then she is instantly reanimated like some kind of furry zombie, demanding her portion under penalty of being clawed or meowed to death.

Jake is heroically making dinner in the galley in this awful sea state.  Imagine cooking chicken Alfredo on your favorite roller coaster ride. I sit  conversing with Roberto on the upper dinette when I notice a new orange light illuminated on the electrical panel.  The forward bilge pump is on.  No need for alarm.  I’m a recovering wooden boat owner.  Bilge pumps are my friend, and having them running all the time used to be considered normal.  Wooden boat hulls aren’t waterproof you see, and “take up” sea water from time to time.  Sometimes they “take up” sea water through their hulls at a rate that would alarm any sane human.  We’re a fiberglass boat though, (which shouldn’t leak) but we’ve had 8″ of rain in the past couple of days and I know the mast-to-deck seal leaks.   It must just be rainwater which has found it’s way to the shallow portside forward bilge under the mast.   The bilge pump light persists though…

I open up the floor and am greeted with water in the bilge and sloshing contents.  A familiar sight to any wooden boat owner.  I am also greeted with an unopened bottle of wine!  Hooray!  No alcohol sales have been allowed at our last port of call due to the Covid virus regulations and we’ve been dry for quite a while.  Mana from heaven! Mana floating in a flooded bilge on a boat 600 miles from the nearest land, 1,000 miles from the nearest boatyard, in 10 foot confused seas, with no other boat sighted for days.  It’s Chilean Malbec of recent vintage BTW.  I know you were wondering.

I offer the crew “good news and bad”. Red bilge wine being the good, sinking far from help being the bad.  I offer my assessment that it is rainwater and Roberto and Jake begin pumping it out while I focus on more important tasks, like finding the corkscrew.  “The water level isn’t going down.” says Roberto.  I stop corkscrewing.  Really?  It’s just rain water and it’s not raining.  It can’t be seawater can it?  There is a time-tested way to tell if it is seawater or rainwater… I take a cup of the nasty brown bilge water and sip and spit (as one would do with a fine wine) the contents.  If it’s rainwater it will be fresh-tasting, perhaps with faint notes of engine oil or diesel.  Nasty, but fresh.  If we’re sinking, It’ll be salty.

It is salty.

I tell the crew that the water is salty and am greeted with the exact expression that mirrors the cold damp feeling I suddenly feel in my chest.  Shit.  Salt water means it’s likely coming in through the hull somewhere.  “Sinking” would be the term used by someone who has never owned a wooden boat. I have bilge pumps.  Lots of them! 6 installed ones to be exact and 3 more large or improvised ones that can be put into service quickly if needed.  I am a recovering wooden boat owner who would never consider his boat to be “sinking” until the pumps can’t keep up, and yet I have that feeling too.  Our 1985 fiberglass Nauticat was lovingly built in Finland with a 3/4″ thick fiberglass hull. Overbuilt some would say. It’s like having a house with 2 foot thick walls. The fiberglass hull itself definitely isn’t leaking as is fashionable in the wooden boat world.  I know how sturdy the hull is because I recently helped install 2 new through-hull fittings right where the water is coming in…  Oops.  New hull work that penetrates the hull right where the water is coming in… A candidate for water ingress.  Not something easily fixable in our sea state or location either.  Also in the same area of the bilge are 4 other through hulls.  We may be pulling up all the floorboards soon looking for our leak.

The small section of bilge is the only flooded portion, which is very reassuring, and it is pumped dry in a few more minutes.   Water isn’t flooding in, so we decide to wait and see what the ingress rate is.  I continue to try and think of where it could be coming in.  Yes it could be the new through hulls, but I’d really prefer to brainstorm something more easily fixable and less catastrophic, so I continue thinking. 

Wham!  A sneaker wave, a combination of the new East and older Northwest swells tries to knock me off my feet.  Merrowww!!  Our furry quadraped is not impressed either, despite her having twice the ability to stay upright.  We heel with the port rail in the water again.  Hey… rail in the water…  The outflow through hull for the forward bilge pump is on that side, just below the rail, and is normally “only” 3 feet above the water.  At these ungodly angles of heel and roll it might be underwater at times, as could be it’s anti-siphon loop which is supposed to keep water from coming in back.  I go outside  and see that indeed, the through hull that should never be underwater, is frequently underwater in these seas and at this angle of heel.   

I go below and close the valve to this through hull.  We wait and watch to see if more water comes in.  The cat continues to send vibes of hate in our direction.  We eat and wait, the cat’s mood is improved with a portion of canned chicken.  No new water comes in during dinner. The wine made a lovely pairing with the canned chicken and pasta BTW.  Ask for it at your next dinner outing.

It’s now been 12 hours and the sea state has continued to afford us the opportunity to have the rail in the water and re-test my theory of water ingress.  So far so good.  No new water coming in. We’re not sinking! Even with the pumps off we’re not sinking!  Now I can relax and again focus on  living on the wall of the boat, sailing to our destination with a happily demented crew, and with a cat who is hopefully still too lazy to go through with her plans to kill me in my sleep. 

It has been another week of daily changes, though most of them wrapping up many of the loose ends thrown at us in the previous week. Begging forgiveness for a bit of stream of consciousness writing (and for the lack of more pictures), I want to give everyone a short update tying up some of those loose ends for you. Korvessa dropped its hook safely in Nuku Hiva on the afternoon of March 26th with a crew of guys happy to see and smell land, even if walking on terra firma would require a longer wait.

The first priority was to find out if there was a way to get Brian home to the US for work. As a life-long paramedic, his services have been badly needed. As luck would have it, the day before another cruiser’s wife had worked with the US Embassy, an airline, and local authorities to charter a plane that could take stranded cruisers from Nuku Hiva to Papeete (a three hour flight) for United Airlines’ last international flight back to the US. As I understand, 30 people or so bought tickets to cover the substantial cost and jumped on that plane Saturday morning to make the connecting flight in Papeete. Korvessa arrived a mere 40 hours or so before the departure of that flight, but Brian got on that plane and made his connections to Papeete, San Francisco, Seattle, and then home.

Getting permission to get Roberto into the US was not such a straightforward process, but the end result after quite a few calls to various places to clarify options and quite a few conversations with a helpful and understanding Customs and Border Patrol officer, Roberto will have permission to enter the US. He will need to have a plane ticket out of the US right after arrival, and we will need to hire an escort from a security agency to take him directly from the boat to the airport, but at least he’ll be able to help Tom get the boat back to the US. It’s not like he would have been able to do any fun touring of Hawaii right now anyway, as the whole state is on a stay-at-home-order until April 30. And Tom will have to sit on the boat in quarantine for 14 days, of course.

Ironically, the kitty may possibly get to avoid quarantine. Because we had all our papers in order to import her into New Zealand, she is likely to be granted permission for “Direct Airport Release” (even though we’re headed in by boat). I have sent in all the paperwork and fee. Now we just have to wait on the official permission and hire a vet to come to the boat in Honolulu to issue an official health certificate.

Which already answers one of the other cliff hangers: We are headed to Hawaii, and after that at some undetermined point (July, maybe) home to the Pacific Northwest. Not only are almost all the island nations closed in the South Pacific for the foreseeable future, but the trip would not be what we would want it to be. It would be so full of uncertainty, possibly full of fear on the part of people we would want to learn from and about, and limited in scope and opportunities to explore. And with our dwindling finances, being stuck in the Pacific or on the other side of the world is simply not a safe call.

We are lucky as American citizens that Hawaii is “short” sail away (14-17 days) and that the route back to the Northwest from Hawaii is a known and well-traveled one. And EU-citizens are lucky that they can stay indefinitely in French Polynesia to wait things out. For those with other passports, choices become much more complicated. Australians and New Zealanders have the option to sail directly home, but that is an awfully long direct sail to do that. And others have much more complicated scenarios ahead of them. The cruising groups we are a part of are full of stories of changed and postponed plans, huge anxiety over uncertainty of policies in guest countries, and dreams put on indefinite hold. And that’s the story of everybody’s life right now in what seems to be a collapsing world, a story of massive upheaval, fright, anger, frustration, sadness, but also of flexibility, resilience, kindness, support, and love.

For all that they have been strict about rules and quarantine (as they should be), French Polynesian authorities have been remarkably organized and flexible in getting the hundreds of cruising boats arriving, almost all of whom departed before the world shut down. The authorities and agents from various yachting agencies have helped boats get berths or moorings in Tahiti, have helped cruisers repatriate to their own countries, and for those out in the islands, being at least understanding of the need to re-fuel, re-provision, and make repairs.

Korvessa, anchored a mile away from the pier in Taiohae Bay on Nuku Hiva, has a view of the 100 other sailboats in the anchorage, all awaiting…. something. Decisions, permissions, repairs, the chance to sail onto anywhere else. They’re not allowed to visit each others’ boats, of course, or commune on shore at all. They are not allowed to go for hikes, swims, or spend time on beaches (neither are the locals). But for the sake of their own mental survival, they make fun of their own. Every morning, there is a VHF net in which news is relayed and requests and offers of help are made. Every evening, there is VHF trivia, which by all reports sounds like an absolute riot. The night that Korvessa hosted, Roberto (who speaks fluent French) made everyone give their answers in their very best French accents, which had a lot of people rolling on their teak floors. Somebody has taken up giving French lessons via VHF, and others are managing a radio show complete with interviews and lessons with other cruisers and even a comedy fake news piece. This is life quarantined in paradise.

Cruisers are only allowed to go ashore once a week now, and yes, they are checked for their permission slips and official papers at multiple checkpoints in town. They are asked to buy no more than they need, of course, and today the verdict was made in all of French Polynesia that there will be no more alcohol sales until after quarantine is over on April 15. I’m going to guess that that has brought down morale significantly. Additionally, there is rain. Lots of it. And it turns out Korvessa has a few leaks, which we had mostly forgotten about because we only got rain twice in the whole year and a half we were in Mexico. Rain, heat, and humidity do not do good things to wood, clothes, skin, or kitty litter, by the way. The boat still smells, in case anyone was wondering.

As for life here in Anacortes, we are biding our time. We are taking a lot of walks. We are playing a lot of games (thank goodness Dylan has finally latched onto board games!). I’ve started an online memoir class to gain some writing momentum. We are baking, drawing, biking, digging weeds, and doing reading, math, and daily “treasure hunts” (things the kids have to learn to get clues to a hidden candy each week). This past week, Dylan’s topic was Formula One racing, and Andy’s topic was drawing. We’re not doing anything overly creative; I don’t have the mental capacity for it. And the kids have way more TV and tablet time than I would prefer, but, you know, we all have to survive this in some way. Giving myself permission not to feel guilty about it is one of my ways of surviving. That and guilt-free afternoon naps when I can snag them. Because I am tired. And I’m looking forward to easing into a life that is a little less emotionally exhausting. We’re part way there.

I hope everybody is staying as safe and healthy as possible. Stay home and hug your loved ones, physically or virtually.

It’s been seven days since I published my last post. One week. And we all know how the world has transformed in that agonizingly long week. Here’s an image of what that week has looked like for us, a bitter sundae with scoops of anxiety, stress, and fatigue, topped with dissolving dreams, a sprinkle of hope, and a rotten egg on top.

I moved up our flights out of Mexico out of concern that the Mexican and French Polynesian borders would close, hoping that we could make it to the Marquesas to meet up with Tom to quarantine ourselves together, or at least to be in the same country. Obviously, I was too late. Since I had had no luck getting through to United Airlines in the days prior, I decided that once I had landed in San Diego, I would go to the United desk and make the change. Of course, the world had other plans. As we taxied to the gate, I turned on my phone to be met with news that French Polynesia had closed its borders.

The next few days was a flurry of research and emails, tears and chest-tightening anxiety. My parents, kids, and I headed north to Washington (no point in hanging out in Southern California when there was no end in sight for our waiting time). Barreling up I-5 in a loud, shaking RV and forcing back bouts of carsickness, I tried to find out what the news meant for arriving boats and their crews on board. I sent multiple emails a day and dug through Facebook groups of people looking for good information about what was happening. But things changed by the hour, certainly by the day, and the information I fed the guys a week ago is completely different today (when I write my book, I’ll try to get the daily/hourly details in there because it is shocking and, eventually, I hope, laughable). If it had only been our family together on board, it may have been a simpler problem to solve. Or not. But the problems are different with crew on board.

Challenge 1: Getting Brian home. Tom needed to get Brian to French Polynesia for his April 2nd flight. They’re less than 24 hours out from landfall, so he’s done that…. except that all flights from the Marquesas stopped on Sunday, and the last international flight out of Tahiti leaves today. There is a “refugee” flight leaving Tahiti on Saturday, so the goal now is to work with our agent and with French Polynesia’s repatriation service to get Brian on that flight. There is no guarantee – in fact, it’s probably unlikely because Tahiti is 900 miles away from the Marquesas – but at least we have a sprinkle of hope.

Challenge 2: Getting Roberto into Hawaii. Everybody was telling boats to divert to Hawaii, and many did. But the decision was not so easy for Korvessa. Roberto has a Danish passport, and while Denmark is a visa-waiver country, that does not apply to people arriving on boats of any sort; he would need a B1-B2 visa. After five calls to various Customs and Border Patrol agents, I learned that it might be possible for him to apply for a one-time waiver when he entered, but with the information inconsistent, and the consequence of getting it wrong being deportation and a “black mark” on his passport, it was too high a risk to take.

And so the boys continued to French Polynesia, with the only major change being that they will arrive tomorrow in Nuku Hiva instead of in Hiva Oa. Nuku Hiva is a larger town with more resources, including food, fuel, and internet. It’s also, on the plus side, reportedly one of the most beautiful anchorages in the Marquesas. They will have been at sea for 22 days. They are tired. They are sweaty. They ate the last of their fresh food yesterday. And to top it all off, there is a rotten egg somewhere in the pantry.

I don’t know what the guys will encounter when they arrive. They may have to do a 14-day quarantine. They may only be given a few days to stay. They may be welcomed and helped. They may be met with closed arms and grudges. I don’t know. The world is so full of unknowns right now.

One of those unknowns is what to do with the rest of our sailing trip. The only known is that it will not look the way we had expected it to look. Tom and I swap sailmail emails and satellite texts of 160 characters trying to process the information and the decisions ahead. Do the kids and I fly out in six weeks’ times and make our way through the only countries remaining open during this time, trusting that eventually New Zealand and Australia will open their borders? Do we hunker down and avoid going ashore in order to minimize contact and reduce pressure on already stressed resources and populations? With travel by plane being an unknown, do we go to American Samoa so Tom can work for a while? And, if so, what about Demon the cat, who, as far as I can tell, is not allowed there without a quarantine. But at this point, we would all be required to quarantine, so maybe that’s a moot point. You may read this and think, of course not! But know that it can take time to come to terms with disappointment. Dreams don’t dissolve in a poof, but in a slow drip as they melt into the icy anxiety and sadness pooling in our hearts.

Do we leave the boat in Tahiti or Hawaii, and come back to finish the trip when we can? Probably not. Our boat would be too far away and too hard to get to, and a ten month break would be a really awkward and uncomfortable time frame, the kids just getting used to being home when we would whisk them away again. We already did that after four months here last summer.

Should we bring the boat home to Anacortes? Maybe. And there are some strong economic arguments for this. It would require a passage to Hawaii, then a passage around the North Pacific High back to the Pacific Northwest, which we can manage. We don’t feel quite ready for being back, though. An intermediary idea is to sail the boat up to Alaska, have the kids join us, and spend the summer sailing it back down the inside passage. It’s remote, not many people. Appropriate, maybe, for weathering a pandemic. An intriguing idea, but still hard to wrap our heads around when we were preparing ourselves for the tropics.

But as those dreams dissolve and swirl into the anxiety and sadness below, so they become something new. Not the same sweet sundae we had planned to delve into, but maybe more of a milkshake. Lactose-free, hopefully, and maybe with something sweet on top – maybe not a cherry, but at least not a rotten egg. As we figure out what to do next, the adventure isn’t stopping; it’s just changing its form.

While Tom, Brian, and Roberto stink up the boat in the middle of the Pacific, the kids and I are surrounded by our own smells here in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle. Carne asada sizzling on sidewalk grills, cinnamony-sweet churros frying in a vat, bright pink flowers powdering their pollen and trees oozing liters of sap, astringent cleaning products steaming off the sidewalk attempting to kill the remains of dog poop, fish carcasses, and scattered trash. And it’s all coated in the smell of jungle, a sweet, humid, decidedly green smell emanating from the cells of every trunk, coconut, and palm frond.

But it’s the sounds of La Cruz that I will remember most. Here in our little apartment in a very real Mexican neighborhood, complete with dirt roads, yappy dogs of all shapes and sizes, and barefoot kids playing with tops in the street, I wake every morning to the crowing of roosters and shrill shrieks and caws of unknown jungle birds. In the background is the hum of trucks starting their early days. And then out of the low din blasts a loudspeaker announcing something that is “DULCE CON CANELA!” I haven’t yet figured out what it is that is sweet with cinnamon, but I plan to find out.

If I walk the two blocks down to the main corner at 7:30 in the morning, it is a bustle of life. Trucks, scooters, bikes, cars and pedestrians dance around each other. Tables are out with tacos, tortas, and juice for sale. The smell is sweet and salty and mouth-watering. There are honks and shouts and exchanges of pesos. Trucks drive by full of men on their way to work, shouting at friends they see on the sidewalk. It is so full of life. Every few seconds, everyone is reminded of the DULCE CON CANELA, and people head toward the top-heavy, crate-laden motorbike to partake of something sweet with cinnamon.

If I head into the center of town at the same time, all is quiet. It is dead except for the few people out sweeping their front stoops and the occasional street dog barking at an iguana. It is in the afternoon and evening when the center becomes alive. School children yammer and screech on their way home. Delivery trucks bump their way down the narrow cobblestoned streets. A truck loaded down with mattresses blasts its product through a loudspeaker. Construction workers shovel and scrape and build. Live music blasts from bars full of retired gringos and vacationers. On Friday, the cloppity-clop of dancing horses resonates from the La Cruz Inn. And at sunset, the party boats full of bare, dancing, inebriated bodies make their way back to the marina blasting Mexican techno.

La Cruz grows on me as I write these words. We’ve been in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle for six weeks now, an eternity in the cruising lifestyle. And I like it. I like this small, Mexican beach town. And yet, it hasn’t grown on us in the same way that La Paz did. By the time we had spent a month in La Paz, we felt as if it were a second home. It was a place we wanted to keep coming back to. So, why hasn’t the charming town of La Cruz grabbed us in the same way? Why haven’t the cobblestone roads, muraled walls, and broad smiles of the locals enchanted us in quite the same way?

The first and simplest reason is that our minds have turned westward. Westward and busy. We explorers have spent our days crossing items off of lists and working on projects, and our adventurous souls did not venture very far past “what new taco place should we try tonight?” Our days were filled with preparing the boat and ourselves for the long passage to French Polynesia and then further across the islands of the South Pacific. While Tom went back to the States for ten days to put some more cash in the cruising kitty, I tackled the first round of purging and sorting (while we, conversely, got tackled by a cold bug going around La Cruz). But the to-do list has no interest in waiting for the phlegm to pass or the 90-degree afternoons to abate. The work continued, our mindset shifted further and further west, and I even started studying French. We haven’t really been fully present here, because our minds are in the middle of the ocean or in the customs office of some distant island.

But we weren’t the only ones. Banderas Bay is a hub for cruisers planning to jump the puddle to French Polynesia, and so everyone is somewhat busy and preoccupied with projects. The marina buzzes with scuba regulators, sanders, drills, clanging halyards, VHF calls, and Spanglish conversations about a myriad of boat services.

La Cruz is also a Kid Mecca. Marina Riviera Nayarit has become well known for its La Cruz Kids Club, which boasts constant activities to keep the kids occupied and entertained: chalk drawing, sushi making, knot tying, navigation skills, baby turtle releases, trash clean up days, talks on saving whales, and the list goes on. The marina also has another kid magnet: a pool. And the sounds of shrieks and splashes, shouts and whines, while the boat kids spent endless hours in the sun-warmed water will stay with me for a long time. It is here that parents bonded are forced to take a break and bond over the myriad joys and challenges we all face. To have heart-felt conversations about crushed dreams and painful decision points. To recall remote anchorages of calm and serenity to give our minds and bodies a break from the bustle of people and projects.

But the bustle of people is part of the second reason La Cruz hasn’t grabbed our hearts in the same way. So much of the bustle of the town is in English. I walk past countless restaurants and bars filled with pale, white faces chattering in distinctly North American accents being served by people with darker skin and darker hair. And even though I speak in that same North American accent, and even though I like supporting the local economy, I feel uncomfortable in this somewhat divided society. I have not yet fully processed or thought through this division (perhaps in a future post where I can reflect at more length). There is a reason so many tourists and snowbirds flock to Mexico; it is a warm, beautiful, hospitable, and a truly special place. But the segregation and the sounds of English everywhere invokes a discomfort in me that I am going to have to process as an American, a lifelong traveler, and a migrant of sorts myself.

I feel strangely more comfortable in the Mexican neighborhood of our little AirBnB, perhaps because it jives more with what I like to experience in international travel: a temporary home, an adoptive family, the chance to become a part of a living neighborhood and culture for a while. The neighborhood is both vibrant and calming. During the day, sales people walk through the alleys selling their wares: huarache sandals, baked goods, hot peppers, propane. Each evening, families gather on plastic chairs on the street and pass around plastic bowls of food and taco toppings. Quesadilla and taco stands pop up sporadically on the dirt roads or front stoops. Mariachi musics blasts from various doorways. Friendly faces greet us every day as we walk through the dusty lanes, filled with kids, puppies, cats, horses, iguanas, and just about everything else you could imagine.

La Cruz de Huanacaxtle will always be a place of transition for us. A transition between North America and the Pacific, between the first half of our sailing trip and the second half. A transition from the daily gunkholing of the coast to a cruising life of big passages between destinations. And perhaps even a transition for our family as we try desperately to reunite in a world that its shutting its borders all around us.

I realized, though, as I walked through my neighborhood and tried unsuccessfully to capture visually the sound of the jungle birds screeching overhead and the blaring of Mexican music out of a second story window, that as much as La Cruz will forever represent an intense time of transition for me, it will equally represent an awakening of my senses, of the smells, colors, textures, and sounds of this small vibrant city. Our last in Mexico. For now. And because I didn’t want to leave Mexico with any regrets, I went chasing down the Dulce Con Canela motorbike this morning to get a taste of whatever it is that he is marketing at top volume from his loudspeaker. It is bread. Sweet, fragrant, and full of carbohydrates and cinnamon. It tastes of Mexico.

Informational Addendum: The kids and I leave Wednesday afternoon for San Diego to spend some time with my parents (quarantined in a campground with a beach nearby, I might add). Tom is 2/3 of the way to the Marquesas and is no doubt ready for landfall. But is land ready for him? And us? Just yesterday, French Polynesia declared a required 14-day quarantine for all incomers to the country. For those on yachts, time at sea counts. For the rest of us, it does not, so the boys and I are expecting a period of quarantine in Tahiti before we can fly to Atuona. IF the borders aren’t closed completely. I’m trying to move up our flights to get there sooner, but more than eight hours of time on hold with United and resulted in nothing because I can’t get through, and my international ticket can’t be changed online. Additionally, they have banned inter-island travel except in emergencies or family necessities, so it might be possible for me to get to Atuona, but once there, we don’t actually know if we’ll be allowed to go anywhere else. The situation is fluid. Very fluid. And at this point, all we want to do is reunite our family so that we can just take what comes at us together from now on.

Someday I’ll ask Tom to write a piece on the same theme, though he’ll likely have a catchier title because he was the one actually out there. All I can do is evoke an image from the words he has fed me through satellite texts.

He and his friends are almost halfway between Mexico and French Polynesia. They have recently crossed the latitude 5N, which is where the dreaded Intertropical Convergance Zone currently starts. And by currently, I mean that beast is alive! It grows and shrinks, sways back and forth, and mottles itself with great purple swaths of calm and orange swirls of squalls. It is the band of weather at the equator where the north trade winds meet the south trade winds, and where opposing currents make you sail s-curves.

It is hot. They are hot. Tom is sweating rags full of his own salt water every day. He can’t walk barefoot in the boat for fear of slipping on his own sweat. The wind does what it can to ease the heat, but on a downwind sail, the boat steals most of the wind’s power for itself. The cat hates it. She has voiced her protest by peeing on Tom’s bed twice, so both duvets, all sheets, and the mattress are out of commission. Tom is sleeping on the square of foam we call our dog bed. And so it smells. A centuries-old smell of ships full of unwashed bodies and frightened animals. Bodily fluids seeping into the floor boards and into the bilge, following the same leeward currents of centuries of sweat and pee.

It doesn’t smell when Brian is cooking. Brian has taken over the galley, mastered the messy spice drawer, and cooks up whatever needs cooking. Until there is a fish on the line, and then the meal is of spicy poke, sweet sushi, or tart ceviche. A bluefin tuna was their prize yesterday, and the crew gratefully ate fresh fish over canned or dried meat. But the cabbage is probably starting to wilt, a few oranges showing signs of mold, and potatoes needing some attention. So there are probably still smells to track down and solve. Unless the boys’ olfactory senses are deadened by now.

They have had wind – with the exception of the third day out – and even the ITCZ may be kind enough to allow them to sail at least half of it or more. But the weak Pacific high has meant fluky and weak trade winds for them (12-17 knots, against the more typical 20-25), and they have appreciated their self-steering Hydrovane which keeps them on the same point of sail without their having to adjust the sails with every shift of wind. The big gap winds out of the Gulf of Tehuantapec in Mexico have driven some easterly swell in their direction, which has been hitting them right on the beam and making for an uncomfortable ride. Hence the disgruntled cat. Hence the gratefulness for pre-prepared frozen meals so that nobody has to brace themselves too long in the rocking galley.

Once at 2 degrees south – in about two and a half days’ time – they should be into the southeast trades. They should have more comfortable wind, more comfortable seas, but squalls multiple times a day. They might curse the fluky 35 knot gusts that hit them, but I doubt they will curse the brief torrential rains, which can wash away some of the smells of fish and sweat, though not of upset cat. The perpetual smell of salt water will be in their noses until one day there will be a whiff of something different. They will smell it before they see it. It will smell green and sweet and alive. They will smell land.

At 9:15 a.m. this morning, Korvessa pulled away from the dock in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle. After filling up our two tanks and six jerry cans with diesel, the guys made their way to Nuevo Vallarta for the official checkout with Customs, Immigration, and the Port Captain. Yesterday, getting our pre-departure paperwork ready at the Port Captain’s office, I found myself choking up at the prospect of leaving Mexico, of our boat leaving Mexico. Today, I found myself choking up at Tom leaving Mexico, with no other country in sight for three to four weeks. It’s a weird feeling. I came back to our little apartment and just vegetated for hours while the I gave the kids free reign on their tablets. I’m going to have to return to actual parenting shortly, but in the mean time, I just needed some time to breathe out all the busyness of the last five weeks.

It’s been a whirlwind of activity to get ready for the passage to French Polynesia, stifled ironically by Tom’s severe cold and Mexico’s afternoon heat. I had planned on getting Tom to narrate a short video about what he did to get the boat ready, but that was simply not possible. Here is small sample of everything we did to get the boat and ourselves ready for the trip:

• Inspect all the rigging and hull.
• Inspect the engine and generator and service various parts.
• Install a solar panel as a bimini so there is a modicum of shade in the cockpit on the transequatorial passage.
• Fix the radio antenna at the top of the mast and check all communication systems.
• Strap down the dinette tables and floor boards so that they don’t go flying in the case of a knock-down.
• Purge the boat of anything unnecessary and find nooks and crannies deep in the bilge for storage.
• Pack the boat full of food, spare parts, and other essential supplies.
• Ensure we have paper charts of the whole South Pacific.
• Ensure that our paperwork is in order (there’s more than you’d think).
• Attend a bunch of seminars on weather, provisioning, rigging, South Pacific, etc to make sure we know our stuff.
• Be social. Though this last week, that took a firm backseat most of the time.
• Last but not least: Watch weather patterns: I watched the weather reports daily to start noticing patterns and developments. Tom will be downloading GRIB files (weather maps) and tuning into HAM nets to get forecasts and identify where the best place is to cross the ITCZ. We have also employed a weather router for this first big crossing. As much experience as we have in looking at the weather, this is a very apt time to listen closely to an expert.

By the way, except for the map, I have no pictures of any of this, because, well, because we were a little busy. So I will let you imagine the piles of tools, of food, of floorboards removed and Tom upside down in the bilge. Of overwhelmed, screeching kids stepping on backs, tool-bags, and Demon’s tail to get to the most inconvenient spot on the boat. Of a meowing cat and sweating, dripping humans. Of Lego pieces everywhere. Let’s just say it could sometimes be chaos.

But we lived through the chaos, and before I start to work on some more detailed posts about La Cruz, provisioning, and other things, here are some answers to a few FAQs we have gotten. Feel free to ask more, and I will try to respond:

• The passage to the Marquesas should take somewhere between three and four weeks.
• It will be somewhere between 2900 and 3200 nautical miles.
• Why such a range? You can not take a straight line to the Marquesas. You have to first get out of the light winds around Mexico, then get into the NE trade winds. From there, you follow the weather to find the narrowest and least stormy place to cross the Intertropical Convergence Zone (the ITCZ, which is full of zero wind and squalls), at which point you make a B-line south (probably by motor), then look for the SE trades to blow you toward the Marquesas.
• French Polynesia is made up of three major island groups: the Marquesas (tall and volcanic, like Hawaii), the Tuamotu Archipelgo (a collection of atolls), and the Society Islands (where Tahiti and Bora Bora are).
• We’re at the early edge of the window to make the crossing, though there are already quite a few boats ahead of us. March and April are when most vessels make the crossing because that’s when the North Pacific High has re-established itself, supporting steady trade winds north of the equator, but before the hurricane season starts in the north Pacific (May 15). Currently, winds look fairly steady at 15-20 knots for most of the passage, except for the next few days when some light air is moving in near the coast.
• There is more than 200 gallons of fuel on board, plus about 220 gallons of water (and a water-maker).
• Even with my forgetting to put the bag of cucumbers on the boat, there is plenty of food. Pretty sure they could make it four or five months. There’s even plenty of cilantro and scallions for as long they last.
• No, the kids and I are not on the boat for this long passage (better for everyone, we agreed), but we have plenty of shorter (2-10 day) passages ahead of us to get to New Zealand so we’re not missing out on that experience. Besides, we will have five flights to get to Atuona, which is kind of an epic journey of its own.

Another journey is in the attempt to document even a little of our adventure on video. Dylan and I have gotten a little behind on our videos, but here is a link to our latest production, which is about the day trip we took to San Ignacio in mid-December. Enjoy!