Vacation?

Exploring the ruins of a Spanish cathedral in San Blas

Cruising (aka doing boat repairs in exotic locations) is full of ups and downs.  We have some really nice days in the sun: exploring local places, eating local food, swimming off the boat and catching big fish.  However, much of our schedule revolves around the massive amount of work it takes to keep this home of ours afloat.  Puerto Vallarta is, supposedly, the last big place as you go south to get items for a sail boat at any kind of reasonable price.  Now that we have been traveling aboard Moments for five months we know more about what we need and what we don't need. We are also in the midst of doing maintenance projects that we would have had to do even if we were still parked in Seattle.  I have mentioned before that our life includes many lists, and the boat work list has been long.  However, I am happy to report that in the last few weeks it has shrunk considerably.  I think Adam is so tired of doing boat work that he actually does a little dance and grabs a beer every time he gets to cross something off the list.  Currently I am singing his praises because yesterday he put his wonderful electrical engineering brain to work and re-wired part of our electrical system (staying up to 4AM) to fix a problem we had with our batteries and he still got up in the morning to make be birthday pancakes!

The remains of our old windlass after its first motor overhaul

Adam going a little crazy with the teak work.

Each boat has its problems and in general we have been very happy with Moments.  We feel fortunate that we have not found anything so problematic that it has really limited our plans for this year.  Sure, the paint is flaking off in places and our windlass died after only a few uses, but the boat is solid, she handles well and for her age is in remarkably good condition.  So you may be asking yourself, if things are so rosy then what is all this work you are doing?  Well in the last week we have totally overhauled the refrigerator ripping out the old (moldy and wet...ewww) insulation, stripping all the caulk, replacing the old insulation with something that hopefully...um...insulates and re-caulking the entire box.  We also brushed off the compressor with a toothbrush and troubleshooted the wiring, which appears to be original.  While the caulk was drying and we were madly trying to consume all of our food before it spoiled we also replaced the jib halyard, refinished all of the exterior teak, scrubbed and painted the engine mounts, re-bedded a leaking window, wired and installed a switch in the galley for the propane, troubleshot multiple electronic devices, climbed the mast to replace light bulbs and check out the rigging and last but not least totally restructured our head and finally, permanently installed our composting head.  In addition, many of these projects required shopping missions and I have come to learn that any "run to the store", no matter how small, takes at least a day in Mexico

John and Adam brainstorming about boat work

Adam with the repaired windlass

Now you may say...wow...these people sound like they are quite handy.  The truth is we are both doing a lot of things we have never done before and have no clue how to handle.  I am not clueless with a screwdriver and Adam definitely has an edge with the electrical systems but we have a whole library here on the boat and are fortunate to have 3G service where we are anchored.  Yeah for Google.  In spite of the fact that we are working hard and often don't believe that we are actually on vacation we are excited about what we are learning and it is quite a triumph when things start working the way they should or you want them to. I figure that these skills will come in handy even after we make it back to dry land, and maybe, possibly if there is another boat in our future.

Lastly, both Adam and I really want to thank our friends and family for all of the Christmas gifts we received.  We would not have been able to do many of these projects without your support.  Thank you!  Much love from Mexico.

Feliz Navidad

A group shot over the bay in Yelapa during a short respite from the heavy rains

John, brave enough to enter the cold water at the end of our hike

The river on the beach at Yelapa

Becca, Adam and I displaying exactly how soaked we got on our hike!

Over the past week we played host to our first set of live-aboard visitors!  John and Becca, our good friends from Seattle came for Christmas and got here in the nick of time, arriving at 2AM on Christmas Day.  Although we have had some wonderful crew, we have not had visitors here on Moments since Adam and I were living here together.  These friends in particular were excellent guinea pigs as they themselves live on a boat and have cruised up into BC and Alaska not long ago.  They know what it is like to live on a boat and how difficult it is to pick both a location and a time of arrival.  Instead, they flew standby and traveled overland (quite an adventure and a story for another time) to meet up with us in La Cruz, a small town on Banderas Bay.   We spent a wonderful Christmas together making beignets, catching very large fish and lounging in the sun.  Unfortunately, Christmas was our last sunny day and since then we have been dealing with clouds and rain.   To Adam and I, the rain was at first a welcome change and a much needed bath for Moments.  But of course, to our friends from Seattle the rain was a little too close to home.  Still, we have managed to have quite an excellent visit getting to catch up with good friends.  Some of the highlights were: catching very big fish, getting to watch less-than-24-hour-old baby tigers nuzzle with their mother, lounging in the hot tub at the Puerto Vallarta Yacht Club, swimming in Banderas Bay, walking on the beach in Nuevo Vallarta and dancing salsa in the street outside of a Cuban restaurant in Puerto Vallarta.  Today we hiked to a large waterfall outside of Yelapa, the small town in cove where we are anchored.  Despite the rain we were determined to have fun and are very sad to see our friends go.  Soon we will be rounding Cabo Corrientes and heading south. Next big stop Barra de Navidad!

Land Ho!

This post is about our wheels, our lifeline: our dinghy.  We have a 10’ Apex , rigid bottom inflatable dinghy (small boat or lanchita here in Mexico).  The dinghy has a fiberglass bottom and detachable wheels on the back to make beach landings a little easier, because it is heavy.  Also, it is not much fun dragging anything through wet sand, especially a 10’ boat.   There are oars which Adam tries to use to save gas but this type of boat doesn’t row very well.  I say Adam because he gets frustrated when it is my turn to row and the boat only moves in circles. Most of the time we are quite a distance from our intended target and rev up our outboard engine, which gets us there both easier, faster and in more of a straight line. In the sailing world (as with anything else really, though here it seems more pronounced) everyone has strong opinions about everything.  You have to take advice, especially about gear, with a grain of salt, shall we say.  Adam and I did a ton of research about dinghies before we bought one because this is a crucial piece of equipment and no small purchase. We couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone.  Although our current dinghy has served us well so far, there are definite changes we would make could we do it all over again.  More on this later.

We use our dinghy to get to shore and carry everything we need back and forth when we are not in a marina.  We try not to stay in marinas and since arriving in Mexico on November 11, we have only spent two nights in one.   They are nice, the boat doesn’t move, you have electricity and water, you can easily get into town and load up with food and did I mention the boat doesn’t move?  However, they are expensive and most definitely a splurge for us. Instead, after we have set the anchor and have stayed on the boat a while to make sure it holds, we get the dinghy ready.  While we are sailing long distances the dinghy rests upside down and deflated on our foredeck (front part of the boat).  Getting it off involves one person lifting the bow with the spinnaker halyard (the line that lifts the sail) until the other person can crawl under the boat and pump up the pontoons enough to make it float.  Then as one person (typically me) lifts, the other person (Adam) guides the boat over the side and into the water wrestling it to stay upright and trying not to get hit in the head when it is lowered.  Sorry, Adam.  If there is any wind this is much more difficult.  After a final pump-up the motor is next.  The motor, which came with Moments, is a 4-stroke Yamaha.  This, of course, meant little to me until I was actually out here and learned how to use an outboard motor for the first time in my life.  This is a relatively small outboard motor but I can’t imagine us dealing with a bigger one because I don’t think I could lift anything heavier.  We get the motor onto the dinghy by attaching it to a block and tackle (pulley system) hooked to the end of the boom which, once the motor is hoisted we can then swing it out over the water and lower it down onto the dinghy.  Writing this, I realize that it sounds much easier than it actually is, you will just have to take my word on the matter.  Because the block and tackle is often frustrating, sometimes I stand on the boat and lift the motor over the side while Adam stands in the (floating and bouncing around) dinghy and takes it overhead to set it on the back of that boat.  And sometimes, here in Mexico, the fishermen will take you into shore if you pay them a few dollars.  Very appealing if I do say so, myself!

Once this is all said and done we then either lock the dinghy to the boat or lift it a few feet out of the water for the night to try and dissuade dinghy thieves which would definitely leave us stranded.  This is all done in reverse when we are preparing to head out sailing again.  Though occasionally on smaller passages we only take off the motor and drag the dinghy behind us.  This slows us down a bit but definitely saves time on either end.

As you have probably guessed, a dinghy is not just the boat. It includes an outboard motor, gasoline, safety equipment, oars, pump and all of the equipment you have on board to lift and stow the outboard and dinghy.  I do not want to say that we are not grateful our appreciative of our dinghy which as of yet has served us well, but there are definitely some improvements that could be made.  Here are my suggestions for other cruisers:

1)      Get the smallest, lightest boat you can possibly deal with.  I would suggest a 6-8’ inflatable with an aluminum bottom.  You will want to get it on and off the deck more if it is lighter and there is less chance that someone will be injured.  Also a lighter dinghy means a lighter sailboat so that you can travel faster an also use less gasoline when you are putting around with your outboard.  Most importantly this means you can use a smaller motor, and this brings me to my next point.

2)      Get the smallest motor that you think will plane your dinghy.  When the dinghy planes it lifts out of the water and travels much faster.  With our current combination of motor and dinghy we can barely get it to plane if only one of us is in it and the wind and waves are exactly right.  When it planes you also get less wet, and we have definitely had some butt-soaking dinghy rides.

There are also some other smaller points such as the necessity of UV resistant materials and oars that float but that information seems more consistent.  We bought our dinghy second hand and are currently in the process of trying to figure out how to patch it because we may need to do that very soon.  This is a useful skill for any cruising sailor because every boat out here has a dinghy, the vast majority of them inflatable and at one time or another in need of patching.

Lastly, we have yet to name our dinghy.  Any ideas, readers?

On a side note, thank you for all of the blog comments and emails.  It is very nice to hear from friends and family, especially at this time of year.  We are currently in Mantanchen Bay outside of San Blas a wonderful town with cobble-stone streets, ruined Spanish forts and a laid back way of doing things.  The view is wonderful but there is no place like home for the holidays. 

Photo Update

I finally have a reasonable web connection so I decided to update you all with some photos.  We have been having a wonderful time making friends and getting to love Mexico.  There is definitely some boat work in the mix, but many of the projects are now just regular maintenance.  We are currently in Mazatlan.  I have to admit that I was very skeptical before our trip given it's reputation as a vacation center.  I was envisioning a mainland Cabo San Lucas, a place we could not wait to get out of.  Instead we have found a bustling but laid back city with a truly "Mexican" vibe.  The old historic center of the town is very much alive with art and music and there is street food everywhere you look.  Last night we brought home some very delicious tamales after stocking up on provisions at the Mercado Municipal.  Instead of staying in one of the marinas, which are way north of town, we are anchored within minutes of the old city center and right under the view of the world tallest lighthouse, which has been operating since the mid 1800's.  A very interesting place indeed and much less expensive than everywhere else we have been.  Although you could get lost in this city for years, we are about ready for some R&R at a deserted beach so we will be leaving for Isla Isabela in the next few days.  Definitely no internet there!

The setup for Thanksgiving

1) Rachel has definitely been getting busy in the kitchen.  A few days confined to the boat due to bad weather in La Paz made her go a little crazy...much to Adam's delight.  (A big thanks to everyone who sent in recipes after the last post.  Keep them coming!)

Did someone say pie?

A loaf of bread made in the pressure cooker to save on propane.  I didn't even know it was possible!  This recipe even uses seawater and tastes relatively like sourdough.

2) Sunny days fishing off the boat leads to great catches, both big and small.

Rachel caught a little grouper!

Adam displays our lunch while voyaging...fresh caught tuna.

 3) Sometimes you don't even have to seek out the wildlife, they come to you!  While sailing across the Sea of Cortez/Gulf of California one night we saw flashes of light at the front of the boat.  Not sure what it was we tethered in and headed to the bow.  Beside the boat were dolphins, racing and jumping our bow, aglow with glittering phosphorescence.  Definitely a trip highlight!

Adam checking out the bird that is taking a mid-ocean rest on our bow.

4) Adam spent his spare time practicing with the sextant. It turned out to be a little bit more math than he wanted while on vacation but he is sticking with it.

5) We have been trying to get outside to explore the Mexican cities and countryside.  Here we are in Bahia de Los Muertos (our boat in the background) and at the top of the world's tallest lighthouse.

In the Galley

In life, some people are planners and others are not.  I am, to a point, a planner.  Plans can always change, I have no problem with that, but I like to see clearly at least one route forwards.  Adam and I would not be sitting in La Paz right now if it weren't for some pretty significant planning by both of us.  That said, I have come to learn that life on a boat gives new meaning to the word.

We make lists.  Oh so many lists.  We typically have a list of things we need to do on any given day, lists of priority projects and repairs, lists of dream projects and repairs and many, many lists for provisioning.  Some cruisers are even more organized and create their provisioning lists based on known levels of consumption and weeks of planned out meals.  This is definitely a winning strategy, but would drive me crazy.  Not only do I like to shop for food by meandering down the isles and grabbing things that strike my fancy, but I could never cook to a schedule.  Cooking on the boat has become my creative time, in a way my “alone” time, and also a welcome tie to my life before everything in my house moved.

This post is for all of those people who asked me, “what are you going to eat?” before we left.  First, I have to explain the situation.  Our galley is a three foot by five foot U-shaped space.  At the end of the U is the stove with the sink to the right and the fridge (if you could call it that) set into the counter top on the left.  The fridge is about the size of a large cooler and has a freezer compartment that, to my knowledge, has never frozen anything.  It is, however, excellent for chilling alcohol.  The fridge struggles to stay below 40-degrees when we are not plugged into shore.  Because it takes so much of our precious power to run the fridge we were originally not cooling it at all, but we found that our food was going bad too quickly and we wanted some fresh options every once in a while.  So now the fridge runs and it is always a mad dash to grab the necessary items before all of the cold air flies out.  In the corner between the sink and the stove the counter top opens up to a dry-locker.  This is our pantry, and is a completely ridiculous space.  I have to reach over the stove to get into it, and because my arms are not 5 feet long, I cannot reach things in the bottom of the locker without hoisting myself onto the counter and diving head first into the dried goods with headlamp.   With the necessary item in hand I swing my legs hard enough to leverage my body out of the hole and back onto my feet.  I call it cooking aerobics.   Maybe it will make up for all of the tortillas I have been eating…  But I digress, back to the galley.   We do have the luxury of water pressure so I typically don’t have to use the hand pump, but it is there as a back-up when we need it. To store snacks, utensils, pots and pans there is a sliding cupboard behind the stove, a cabinet above the sink and one, tiny, drawer.  The stove itself is a glorified propane camp stove with two burners and an oven.  It is gimbaled and has pot clamps for when the boat I less that still.

Now that you (maybe) understand the setting I can fill you in on what we have been eating over the past few months.  The best times are obviously while we are in port.  We went shopping in La Paz yesterday and just ate some delicious bacon tacos with fresh tomatoes, cabbage and cilantro on hand-made tortillas.  Think of it is as a Mexican BLT.  Lunch is typically the hardest meal to dream up because 1) we are busy and 2) lunch meats are expensive and need to be kept cold.  Honestly, if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them.  Sometimes we have leftovers from dinner but mostly we slap something between two pieces of bread or wrap it up in a tortilla.  One kilo of the worlds most delicious hand made tortillas only cost us about $2.  Dinners are pretty much the same as they have always been.  Last week some of the highlights were spaghetti carbonara with mushrooms and artichoke hearts, fajitas, stir-fried ginger noodles, quesadillas, and pressure cooker paella.  It is always nice when we catch a fish.  We shared the large dorado and still had quite a few meals.  I even covered some pieces in cornbread and served them up with Cajun beans and rice.  Yum!  Breakfast is also pretty typical: fruit, yogurt, granola, eggs of every kind and the occasional banana chocolate chip pancake.  Oh and did I mention the ramen.  We eat a lot of that too, though typically not for breakfast.

As you can see we are not starving.  Food has definitely been more expensive that we budgeted, even when we shop at the government-subsidized market.  Also, there have been some days at sea where I think we ate granola bars, fruit and trail-mix for more than three meals in a row.  Yesterday we found some delicious roadside tamales for less than $2 but most of the restaurants cost about the same or more than we would pay in the US.  Hopefully this will change when we get to more rural areas.  Most of all I am adjusting to having to cook for someone other than myself, especially since he eats about five times what I do.  Next week’s experiment is baking bread in a pressure cooker. I hear it’s not that bad!

I know there are some wonderful cooks out there reading this, so if you have any easy recipes that you are willing to share, please pass them on.  Keep in mind that I am shopping at a Mexican market.

Cruzeros

After rounding the cabo and heading north we caught a rare south wind into the Gulf of California/Sea of Cortez which shot us north to two rolly anchorages before we finally caught some sleep in the Bahia de Los Muertos. Oddly enought this bay has recently tried to change its name to Bahia de Los Suenos in order to increase property values and trouism.  Whatever the name, we spent a wonderful, restful day there snorkeling, hiking and socializing with some of our new friends from the Baja Ha Ha.  One of the other boats actually had a woman just my age who was a recently graduated medical student from Sweeden.  She and I had a great time exchanging notes about everything, work and not.

Currently we are anchored in Bahia Falsa, spitting distance from La Paz. For one day we shared the bay with only one other boat, but last night some other boats rolled in and we had a sunset happy hour on the biggest boat in the bay.  It was a great time chatting with all of the other cruisers and learning that we all have the same problems and challenges.  When you are on your own little boat sometimes it feels like you are the only ones constantly doing repairs and dealing with disagreements, but getting together with other cruisers reminds me that we are actually doing very well.  One of the couples had been married for fourty years and said that they had never had as many horrible arguments or tears shed as they have had in the last few months.  We have definitely had our fair share but, despite a few revengeful dreams no one has gotten thrown overboard...yet.

Baja Ha Ha Ha Ha.....

We have made it to Mexico.  Go, go, go.  I feel like we have never stopped running since we left Santa Barbara.  For our trip down the Baja Peninsula we joined the Baja Ha Ha sailing rally, a group of 150+ sailboats that make the trip from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas every year.  The rally covers the 750-ish miles in one week, which is a lot of sailing, especially for our relatively slow boat and with only two hands aboard.  The schedule went like this:

San Diego – Turtle Bay, Mexico: 4 days/3 nights at sea

Two nights in Turtle Bay

Turtle Bay – Bahia Santa Maria: 2 days/2 nights at sea, arriving in the early morning hours

Two nights in Bahia Santa Maria

Bahia Santa Maria – Cabo San Lucas: 2 days/1 night at sea

Frankly, we are exhausted and Cabo is not exactly our kind of place to rest.  After spending our first day in town running between immigration and the Capitan del Puerto we are already sick of the cruise ship crowds, crazy night life and ridiculously expensive prices.  It is sad when you leave the US and the only place in town you can afford to buy groceries (and the place suggested by all of the locals) is Walmart. We wanted to run when we saw the large signs with a familiar slogan: siempre precios bajos.

The restaurants and grocery stores are full of employees with flawless English, but Adam and I have both enjoyed brushing off our Spanish skills at immigration, the cell phone store, plumbing shops and with mechanics.  As most of my vocabulary is medical and Adam seems to have spent a significant amount of time in high school coming up with naughty things to say in Spanish we occasionally have to pull out my dictionary, but together we can typically get our point across.  One of our major success stories was wandering around Turtle Bay attempting to find a welder to fix our Monitor Wind Vane.  This wonderful piece of equipment helps us to steer the boat, accounting for both changes in the wind and waves.  It is exhausting having to hand steer, constantly fighting the waves, especially when you are the only one on deck and you also have to run the lines and trim (adjust) the sails.  Someone (no blame here) broke the key piece of equipment which attaches the vane to the wheel while trying to dodge a wave the night before.  Our greatest impediment to finding a welder turned out not to be our language skills, but the fact that it was the day before the Day of the Dead and most people were on vacation!  Still, as the Ha-Ha fleet of 150+ sailboats is the biggest thing that happens in Turtle Bay all year, we were able to find a fuel man who handed us off to a little boy who led us to a closed mechanic’s shop where we wandered into the small tienda down the street where the shop girl got on her cell phone and instructed us to find a house with many small cacti where a man who could weld lived.  However he was not home and his wife called around town and then told us to find a street where he may be sitting and we walked until we heard the sound of saws and went around the back of the original mechanic’s shop where some men were tearing apart a rusty old wagon and were very proud that they could say “stainless steel” in English.  I am not sure if they every understood our broken explanations of what exactly the wheel drum and cog pin were for, but these wonderful men welded together our broken wind vane and then refused to accept our money.  We made sure to pay them in cookies and beer.

Hopefully when we leave Cabo we can get back to the glimpses of “real” Mexico that we saw as we rushed down the coast.  Oh yeah...and we caught some fish.