Someone dropped a bomb on the morning net today. We were speeding right through our regularly scheduled broadcast when the voice of Marina La Cruz came on to inform us of a policy change. “The dinghy dock” (which had hitherto for been free) “will now be $5USD/day. We will also be issuing a day pass for the cruisers in the anchorage; $20 for use of the ‘services’ [VIP lounge, showers, etc.]” The net nearly imploded. For a few minutes all you could hear were boos and clicking as every boat that was listening echoed their dissent. $5/day is easily twice the most expensive dinghy dock fee in Mexico. We cleared out of Cabo (the former champion of excessive price) in just a few days, largely because of their API and dinghy dock fees. My mind was racing. Where could we go and still provision and get work done on our boat. Are the tacos in Punta de Mita anywhere near as good?

There were dozens of questions which Jeff of Casa Maru recorded and typed up for the meeting later that day. Some of the startling answers were:

Q: If we are visiting a friend on the docks will we have to pay?

A: Yes. People have already been asked to pay when visiting boats in the marina

Q: Is there any flexibility on price?

A: No.

Q: Why are they doing this?

A: Some cleats were stolen off the dinghy docks; someone left used oil on the docks; people are dropping trash off; people are parking on other docks and their friends are letting them in/out; security; order; we want people to stop using our other services.

Everyone that I talked to about this seemed to be feeling yanked around. Sure, none of us in the anchorage have any right to the marina’s dinghy dock, but we are all here because of the accessibility of La Cruz and the generally laid back easy nature of it’s inhabitants. If we start having to consider cost in every trip to shore La Cruz (I suspect) will become more of a stop over and less of a seasonal destination for many cruisers. Another subtle detail that seemed to have slipped the management’s attention is the fact that almost all of us at anchor come into the marina once or twice a month. We are all paying customers with gobs of goodwill for the marina. That goodwill took a major hit today.

To it’s credit the owner and manager of the marina (Pedro and Rafa respectively) opened their doors to the cruisers this afternoon to discuss the situation. They listened, we listened, and with very little animosity we agreed on some more respectful terms. The cruisers noted that La Paz Marina charges $15 pesos for dinghy dock and trash, and another $15 pesos for showers. We asked that Marina La Cruz  match this price and they (mostly) agreed. The new fee for day long dinghy access is $20 pesos. This does include trash (for now) but the marina was very reluctant to concede that and will reconsider a separate fee for that if the trash issue becomes a problem (though I admit I don’t know what sort of problem that might be).  Showers are basically out of the question. The marina will still offer the $20USD “day pass” for “services” but a slip for our boat size is only $27USD/day, a fact the management openly acknowledged. They also confirmed my suspicion that they would just assume we come in with our boats if we want to shower.

So the day was a measured success for the cruisers. I personally don’t believe that this had anything to do with the stated grievances. There are rumors circulating that there may be a more personal reason for all this. Regardless, no one present at today’s meeting maintained that the marina didn’t have the right to charge for the dinghy dock, or that it shouldn’t exercise that right.  I think we were all a little blown away by the ham handed way the decision was rolled out, and by how excessive the fee was initially. To this Pedro responded “We Mexican’s are not so comunicativo.” I have had the pleasure of knowing many Mexicans, both here and in the US and I had never noticed that before but I guess I will just have to pay closer attention.

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Last week I failed to appear at a Pacific Puddle Jump planning meeting and was consequentially elected to be the “Admiral” of the Banderas Bay  ”Fleet.”  It’s not entirely clear to me what this means so I am assuming that I am the project manager of a cat herding operation. The Pacific Puddle Jump started nearly 20 years ago as a way for pre-gps, pre-accurate-long-term-weather sailors to support each other in crossing the largest ocean in the world. Over the years technology and knowledge base have matured and become fairly ubiquitous. The upshot is that nearly anyone can spend a little time on the internet and reap the wisdom necessary to cross the ocean.  In spite of this sailors up and down the Pacific coast of the Americas still flock to the PPJ meetings in search of social connection, reassurance, and more information.

This picture was taken in Paradise Village and I am really looking forward to taking another picture of this group in a village in paradise.

The Pacific Puddle Jump has never had a formal start date, end date, or starting line. The organizers offer no safety support (other than the informal moral, information, and relay support that the net provides). So to say that I am the “Admiral” of the “Fleet” is kind of like saying that I am the king of the anarchists. When I met with the group yesterday I put forward a few topics, organized a chart copying run, and suggested some things for the SSB NET controllers and participants to think about. I suggested that someone volunteer to get more information on each of the topics and perhaps best of all, talked with an artist about designing our shirt!

I am actually quite honored that this group of experienced and knowledgeable sailors chose to saddle me with this responsibility, even if they thought they were dodging a bullet.

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We are about a month away from setting out across the largest ocean on the planet. The list of things to do; for the boat; for the kids; for us; just gets longer but we are confident that we will be able to make the trip safely and comfortably.

This week we are working on the haul-out. We got an insanely high quote last week, and then subsequent tips from fellow cruisers gave us renewed hope that we might not have to spend a fortune for a few coats of paint and some holes in the hull. Once we figure out where and when to haul, we have to decide what we are going to do with the family. Depending on where we haul out we may be able to live on Convivia, but do we want to? Living on a boat “on the hard” means no grey water, no potty, and a 15′ drop if anything or anyone falls off the deck. It most likely means a lot of eating out. Right now I am leaning towards a cheap apartment or hotel for the week that Convivia is out of the water.

Once she is back in we have to start provisioning, and finishing up some above the waterline projects. Amongst these are such gems as, revarnishing all the wood (we use Cetol if you’re wondering), re-beding the stanchions, addressing the portlight leaks, and re-plumbing the water maker. For the provisioning we have an ace in the hole. We just found out that Grand is coming right before we jump. She will be able to help out with some of the harder to find items. For the rest we have Costco and some amazing local markets.

We are also stocking up on gifts for the kids. It’s hard to imagine what 21 days on the Ocean will be like for them, but I would like to have some things to pull out and surprise them with if things get dreary, tense, or complicated.  On the same topic, we need to think about gifts for other kids that we meet along the way.

And 21 days is really just the tip of the iceberg. Once we arrive in the Marquesas we will be faced with insanely expensive provisions. Last year’s puddle jumpers reported $8 beer (yes just one), $16 hamburgers, and $12 melons. So while the 21 day crossing to the Marquesas is certainly the longest single passage, it’s not  the only part that we have to provision for. For the big stuff, we are looking at 6-8 months.

So, are we totally stoked to be crossing the Pacific in a month. YES… but it is going to be a lot of work. I hereby apologize in advance for all the posts I’m not writing, the calls I’m not making, and the photos I’m not taking. We will resume normal operations (with less Internet)  in April.

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When we left California we knew that we’d have to lower our standards in certain ways. We left our carseats behind, sold our bike helmets, and stepped out of Whole Foods.

We got to Mexico and ate ceviche, with salsa, from a street side vendor. When we order water at a restaurant we don’t worry if it comes from a bottle or a glass.

We’ve accepted rides in cars without carseats. We’ve taken rides in taxis without seat belts. We once waited for a bus so long we got in a delivery truck in the front seat, with no seat belts, with a stranger.

We have shopped at Walmart and sprayed DEET on our skin. We drink Coke and cocktails from cans. We’re planning on buying precooked bacon and chicken from a can from Costco.

We send our kids to get ice cream, by themselves. Did I mention that they didn’t even eat dairy in the US?

We ate breakfast at a restaurant during the pole dancing lessons and watched the kids perform when it was their turn. They sure can spin!

We went nearly a month without a real shower.

We left our kids with someone we just met so that we could go snorkeling. We sent Ruby to a sleepover on a boat we hadn’t even been on.

We celebrated a birthday yesterday with ice cream sundaes, complete with colored sprinkles and gummy bears. Ruby and Miles didn’t know what ice cream sundaes were, and we let them veer from our old one piece of artificial color candy a year standard.

We got in a car with our friend and Miles sat in my lap in front seat. We didn’t even reach for our seat belts. I had just given Ruby permission to ride home on the pegs of her friend’s bike, with no helmet.

Last night we stayed out late at Ana Bananas, listening to the loud classic rock cover band, until the kids needed to be carried back to the dingy and dropped asleep in their beds without having their teeth brushed.

And tonight we’ll go to a wedding, of a couple we met yesterday, and celebrate with some sparkly boomy things that are usually reserved for American Independence Day, that we bought with the guidance of a nine year old friend of ours.

The thing about Mexico is that we feel safe, and we do what we need to with the resources and information we have here, and every day is a celebration of something. And boy do we have fun!

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Posted from Jarretaderas, Nayarit, Mexico.

We are in our final port of the Mexican leg of our great adventure. The boat is falling apart around us*: port lights leak in the rain; blown gasket on the water heater causing fresh water to hemorrhage when we turn certain faucets on; little sun for power; water maker broken; and we are temporarily out of money. Note: I did not catalog any of the things I have fixed recently.

You know what is awesome about this scenario? We are happier than we have ever been. That’s not to say that we haven’t had moments of greater joy, but week after week our joy exceeds the meek attempts of luck and nature to harsh our mellow.

The only thing that detracts from my joy at the moment is this money thing. Our temporary condition will be put on long term hold sometime next week when we finally get the retirement check that will pay off Convivia and give us cruising kitty for the next 12 months. It remains stressful only because it’s a reminder that a) eventually someone in this family will have to work (thereby putting our adventure on hold) and b) that someone will probably be me.

That stress is balanced though. Today we spent a happy day together on Convivia. We listened to the rain coming down on the cabin trunk while we played games, read books, built Legos, and enjoyed our coffee. Later we ventured out into the rain for $1 tacos and flan at our favorite joint. As we walked the flooded cobblestone streets back to our tender, we were treated to the largest, brightest, most vivid double rainbow I have ever seen. It filled me with the emotions of youth and we—our merry family—rushed down street after street, looking for it’s end. As we pulled the tender out into the anchorage the rainbow faded into a magnificent sunset.

Days like this make it easy to regain perspective. Sure we may not be completely free from the manipulations of economy and politics, but we are MORE free than we could be in any life I can imagine.

* I may indulge in the occasional hyperbole.

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Posted from La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, Nayarit, Mexico.

I know, I’m a broken record, but I feel I underestimated Mexico and want to shout its praises for all who, like me, didn’t know what they were missing. I know I’m not that first to blog about this, we aren’t even the first to get video, but still this is special.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I took this footage after a long, stressful and slightly anti-climatic day. Afterwards I felt renewed, and ready to rock some bureaucracy. I can’t say public transportation in the USA ever gave me that much!

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Today we said goodbye to a family that we have been traveling with since Mazatlan. In the cruising world this is called buddy boating. That term really falls short of the mark though. When you cruise intentionally like this with another boat, especially one with kids the same age as yours, your lives get subtly interwoven. You tend to eat together daily, errands and activities sync up and within a few weeks you feel almost as at home on their boat as on your own.

Kara and Ruby were delightful together. They seemed to bring out the best in each other even when they were worn out. Every morning Ruby would wake up (way too early) and start begging to call Taking Flight. When Kara finally popped up on deck, Ruby would hail and start making our plans for the day. “How about Kara comes over this afternoon, the adults can sit in the cockpit and we will let you talk.” …and they did. Both families were equally happy to have the pair because when they were together they were happy, and very very occupied.



So this morning when ‘Fight’ came over to drop Ruby off from their second consecutive sleepover, and say their goodbyes, Kara was (literally) shrouded in black. Her sweet head hung destitute over the gunwale of the dingy while Ruby cried her little heart out. It was heartbreaking, and even as I was witnessing her sorrow, I was so proud of the way she had handled it. She knew the goodbye was coming, knew it would hurt, but still gave her whole heart to the friendship right to the last minute.

Later in the day we received an email from Britannia. It was the first of what will likely become a series of “how and when are we going to meet up” exchanges. The contrast of the expectation of reunion and the disappointment of farewell was somehow deeply comforting to me. It seemed to reenforce the promise that in this round world, the only thing standing between a “goodbye” and “hello old friend” is a few more miles under the keel.

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Posted from La Manzanilla, Jalisco, Mexico.

We’re in Manzanillo, anchored outside of Las Hadas resort and we’re on the verge of a transition.  Our friends that are heading to El Salvador and Panama are heading south while we turn around and return to La Cruz in Banderas Bay. Manzanillo is where we make the choice not to head to Panama, or El Salvador, or Columbia, or Costa Rica, or the Galapagos or even to Zihuatanejo, because it’s too far to just turn around. Boats are now making their plans to head south, or head into the Sea of Cortez, or like us, to sail across the biggest ocean on the planet.

But where are we going? Well, we’ve said we’re going where the wind blows. We’ll go to the Marquesas to check into French Polynesia. They’re the closest islands to Mexico, about a three week sail away.  We think we’ll spend Ruby’s eighth birthday in the Tuamotos and we are planning on getting to the Tahiti Moorea rendezvous at the end of June. And then again we’re free as birds to explore the South Pacific. We’re pretty sure we’re on our way to New Zealand except the wind blows to Australia. Our friends on s/v Britannia buried treasure for us in Tonga that must be dug up and our desire to catch up to them might be stronger than the wind on our bow between Tonga and New Zealand.

Have you ever looked at a map of the Pacific? There are 20,000-30,000 islands. Could we find 10,000 and name them to be sure? How in the world will we choose?  How will I ever feel satisfied that I’ve seen enough? I’m loving Mexico, every town, every hill climbed for the view, every beach, every anchorage. I want to go south and see more. I want to go into the Sea and see more. I want to go back to the islands north of La Paz just to see that amazing clear blue water again. It’s going to be very difficult to leave when we do. I’ll miss Mexico because it’s beautiful and wonderful in so many ways, and because I don’t yet know it well enough.

As the miles flow under the keel and I see more, the more I want to go just around the corner. I can only think of one way to make sure I get to see everything I want and to explore the world in intense detail. Have you noticed that if you rearrange the letters in Forge Over you can spell Go Forever?

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Chamela

For some reason I didn’t take as many pictures as usual, but I did manage to capture the flavor of these two stops, with just a handful of good exposures.  Chamela is an unassuming, quiet harbor frequented (it seems) more by Mexican tourists and RVrs than by cruisers and foreign tourists. I loved the chill, laid back beach scene and Ruby worked up the nerve to ask a spanish speaking girl to play. Once she got over the initial static barrier of communication, they played for an hour or so in the surf and on the beach, while Vick and I enjoyed a great grilled snapper. Perhaps we will get another chance to enjoy this harbor on our way back to La Cruz.

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Barra de Navidad and Chiuatlan

Barra de Navidad was absolutely not on my list of places to visit… until I talked to Barbara and Tom on Hooligan. They strongly recommend Barra and we decided to give it a shot. I’m glad we did. Barra is another slightly sleepy beach town. Unlike Chamela it does draw a fair amount of foreign tourism, and from my very informal  survey has a semi-permanent expat community as well. Barra is the kind of place that one could get stuck in, comfortable, relatively inexpensive, and very pretty. We speculated that if we didn’t leave when we had, we might have woken up in 50 years and realized that the last 5 decades had been spent chain smoking, drinking 5 margaritas a day (happy hour is 1-6), and hanging out at the Sands Hotel regaling passing through cruisers with our war stories (all fabricated). Not that that would have been a bad life…

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I’m going to risk sounding slightly ungrateful or whiney—though perhaps other long term travelers will understand—in an attempt to bring some resolution to the way I am feeling today. I woke up this morning to this view:
(note, I took this with the iPad, just now. No extra care was taken, it looks more beautiful in real life).

It’s gorgeous right? I mean, more gorgeous than usual. Yet somehow my reaction to it was meh-ish. Vick thinks this might be the most stunning place we have been so far, but I am more interested in a nap and maybe a few days of book reading than going for a hike or zip line.

I knew the moment I started thinking about it that I was suffering from a mild case of travel fatigue. This is common enough for travelers and tends to be the result of over stimulation, homesickness, and/or repeated culture shock. Each of these has touched me to some extent but the over stimulation has been the most significant. Every few days we pull into a new harbor, gape at the unbelievable surroundings, and then have chain-social-events until we collapse into our berths. I meet a new cool cruiser every few days and wish that I could spend a week or two getting to know them, but then we are off again or other friends stop by and my attention is split. Split once, twice, thrice… and so on until I feel stretched as thin as a nanotube, at once greater and yet so minute.

So that’s how I’m feeling currently. My plan of attack is to try to minimize side trips, maximize chilling out, and try to remain present when that fails. In two weeks we will be back in La Cruz where I can fall into some sort of routine, see our good friends from California, and stay put for a month or so before heading out to the South Pacific. I would love to say that I planned it this way, but I guess I am just lucky.

If you are suffering from a similar funk, you might like to check out these two blogs.

10 Ways to Kick Travel Fataigue’s Ass and Slowing the Pace of Travel

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Posted from Manzanillo Municipality, Colima, Mexico.