Category Archives: Uncategorized

Still No Zombies, Take Two

Posted on by

Here’s an update to our decision making process as we move through this unstable time. The only thing that is stable is that we have no plan and we’re sticking to it. Or rather, we have many plans and aren’t sure which one will stick. Is that the same thing? It kind of feels like it to me. Overall, the plan is to get the boat back to Washington. But even that is looking wobbly. Would we even be able to work given the current situation?  I can plan on going to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, and that’s pretty much it. Small victories.

Caught this Osprey mid meal. We do love the wildlife here.

Looks like we will be stuck in La Paz for longer than expected. Of course, this is the norm with La Paz (which we call La Pause). It seems like no matter how long you think you will be here, something comes up to keep you from leaving. I’m just going to lean into being here for now. After all, there’s really no hurry.  Last time we were in this area we refused to even come into La Paz for fear of getting stuck. We anchored outside of the canal and hitched a ride into town, then Übered back to our boat. It worked. We were only at anchor for a night, then we left. This time we risked entering the bay and now we are at anchor outside Marina de La Paz with no end in sight. We have a lot of little medical things to take care of and this is a place to do it. Things always take longer than we think. As things devolve rapidly here in Mexico, we just try to keep our heads above water.

Like all of the rest of you at home, we’re getting used to life throwing us curve balls on the regular. What stays the same is that everything changes daily. So today we walked several miles down to the CONANP office for the Revilligagados Islands, those offshore islands that seem like they would be the best place to be completely isolated from the world. We’ve looked forward to those for months. We wanted hard copies of our permit. The park ranger (is that what they are called here?) had a worried look on his face as he realized who we were. Yes, we are the boat Galapagos that has that permit and plans to sail to Hawaii, that’s us, sir. He looked at the floor in the way that Mexicans do when they have to tell you some bad news. Mexicans hate to share bad news with you. It makes them feel sad. The bad news is he was just on the phone with the Mexican Navy and they are closing the islands to visitors because of the virus. He was very sorry. Very, very sorry. Things could change for the better, or not, or for the worse, or not. Who knows now in this time of compulsive hand washing?

Well, our disappointment is huge. What else could possibly happen now?

Oh, I’ll tell you what else. While we were in the dermatologist’s office (no findings, and he complimented me on taking care of my skin, thanks be to the Divine one) I saw a post on Facebook referencing the fact that Mexico is no longer checking boats out of the country. WTF? I know this from two sources now that both say that in order for our boat to check out of the country and receive our Zarpe (the paper that tells the world we legally checked out of one country before entering another) we would have to take the boat all the way up to Ensenada, which is just south of Tijuana and many hundreds of miles upwind and current from Cabo San Lucas. Again, WTF? Many times I said this today. Many, many times. I said the full words, ok? I have all the best words.

Of course, we can choose to leave without checking out. After all, we are going home and legally home is where they have to take you in. But the issue is that we might like to come back to Mexico some day and leaving without saying goodbye is bad form. They might hold it against us regardless of the Corona Virus.

Then there is the fact we have crew aboard. It’s kind of unsettling to have crew when you aren’t sure you are going anywhere. Or how long it will take you to get there. But we enjoy his company so we are focusing on that. And when Ryan goes who will play Chess with Michael? Because it won’t be me.

Options swirl in our minds. I put more and more food on the boat, considering yet another trip to Walmart or the local Chedraui. How much more food can we squeeze onto this boat? How long will we need to be self-sufficient? Right now I’m going to say we could live for over two months on the food we currently have stockpiled and I’m probably not done yet because my mother grew up in the depression and I am genetically related to her. Nothing gives me pleasure like a well stocked larder.

Will Mexico soon have supply issues? Will we have grocery stores with nothing on the shelves like I see on social media from back home? Are those images overblown? Because there is a lot of food in Mexican stores. I know that there was a run on hand sanitizer here, though, and now you can’t find it at any price. Good thing we know how to actually wash with soap and water. Remember that? It still works. Do I need to buy toilet paper? I hear that’s quite the commodity lately. Maybe I better get more flour and yeast, and jarred tomato sauce. They import some delicious pesto here and it’s cheap. I will put together yet another list. Provisioning. I know how to do that. I can control that until the stores run out of food.

We have located a water maker and will probably buy it if we can agree on a price. It was a piece of equipment we convinced ourselves we wouldn’t need before we left the dock for this trip, but that was before armegeddon. It’s a Rainman and is new, never used, with all the bits and pieces accounted for. Plug and play. Seems like a good time to be able to make our own water, no?

We could throw ourselves on the mercy of the port captain here in La Paz, say we’re going home, please give us a zarpe and then we could just leave from here, skipping the Pacific side altogether. I wonder if that would work. There’s another boat planning the same trip as we are and they are worried about getting out of the country legally as well.  I would really like to go back to the Pacific side one more time, but the population there is much denser and there are more active cases of the virus there. Still, I do live on a boat…I’m in natural isolation at almost all times.

After all, we would miss the dolphins.

We still consider Hawaii, but if that looks like a poor choice we could just do the clipper route, which means sail way out and do a big tack north, without touching land. The water maker would make that a doable option. It would be many weeks at sea, but talk about quarantine! I don’t know if our crew, Ryan, would be up for that. It’s a lot to ask of someone who has never done any kind of a passage before. And it’s not like he can change his mind in the middle of the sea. If we decide to do that he may need to bail on us and we would understand.

If it’s true that we have to go to Ensenada to check out, we could do a sail out from Cabo San Lucas and then a long tack north to Ensenada but we have not studied that possibility yet. I just know I hate bashing into wind and seas. It’s bad for the boat and it’s bad for crew. It’s just bad. Period. If I have to do it, I want to consider every single other option first.

The morning cruiser’s radio net is fascinating here. Each morning we are privy to the latest fears and myths circulating about this virus. The person whose job it is to keep the conversation focused on the agenda has a hard time lassoing people in and keeping them off the precipice of despair and conspiracy theories. Fake news flies across the radio waves faster than droplets of viral spittle. People get irritated, people tell other people to settle down and not drink the koolaid. We sit, amused and a little alarmed, in the cockpit; our morning entertainment over coffee. Meanwhile, Mexico is closing the national parks.

One of the local news websites for gringos had an article about how people are wearing facemasks in La Paz and how the word on the street is that they are blaming the gringos for bringing this virus to Mexico. Yeah, we are seeing some facemasks, especially from workers in the grocery store. Bottles of hand sanitizer by each door, too. The article stated that the locals were giving the gringos a wider berth than usual. Huh. I call bullshit on that. We’ve been out and about all week and have had no experiences like that at all. Everyone is their usual helpful selves. This website should not be spreading what amounts to nonsense. How are they measuring it anyhow? Pure bull hockey if you ask me and irresponsible as well. I refuse to link to their article.

What will tomorrow bring? Will Mexico close all the island parks as well? Will we have to stay here another year? The one thing we haven’t considered is putting the boat away and flying home. We live on the boat. We don’t have another place to live right now. Our house has other people in it. Our kids do not have room to harbor us for long periods of time.  We like living on our boat. Also we live in Washington State, the hotbed of Corona Virus. i bet we are safer here. Why would we go there now, immediately, on an airplane? We plan to be back there in the summer. Hopefully this will have blown over by then. And if not, maybe we will be in Mexico another year after all. Could be worse. It could be raining.

So it’s a good thing we have nothing but time right now. We can wait and see what happens. Time’s going to pass whatever we do. Hope you are all staying well and washing your hands. Stop touching your faces, too.

Got to say that it could be worse than being stuck where water is this beautiful and there are friendly sea lions to play with.

No Zombies Yet

Posted on by

So this wasn’t our year for crossing the Pacific to French Polynesia. We made the decision to put off that trip for a number of reasons, but apparently even if we had been ready to go, the Corona Virus would have had other plans for us. Just today French Polynesia’s president announced that movement between islands would be prohibited except for family or professional reasons and that any person entering the country must be quarantined for 14 days. This mandate is good until rescinded; after all, no one can predict how long this particular armegeddon will last. Whoa. Until this virus shebang is over, it’s definitely not business as usual for cruising sailboats. While I imagine some boats might continue on to the South Pacific and just stay in one place for however long it lasts, others will be discussing a ‘Plan B’ right about now. We are truly sorry for the folks who have worked so hard to get their boats ready and now have to regroup and change their plans. It’s a strange time.

www.PacificCatalyst.com What a boat! It screams Pacific Northwest and is stunning.

As we move towards leaving Mexico and sailing to Hawaii, we wonder how to make decisions about our next moves. Mexico has begun taking measures to prevent the virus from gaining a foothold here. All the schools in the country are currently closed. The last report I read had 14 cases in the south Baja, where we are, being tested for the virus. All of them are either Americans or Europeans. Mostly Americans.

We saw a few people wearing facemasks here in La Paz, and when we went to a taco place for lunch they had a big bottle of hand sanitizer on the counter. There have been rumors of the Mexican president closing the border with the United States, although nothing has happened yet and we hope it doesn’t. That would be an incredibly big deal. Based on the number of people out enjoying walking by the water on Sunday evening, social distancing hasn’t taken over here yet but it’s only probably a matter of time before that comes to Mexico as well.

A Blue Whale. Definitely a bucket list moment.

We had an interesting conversation with a store owner in La Paz today. She admires their current president quite a bit. She said he puts a video on Youtube every day at 6:00AM to give the entire country an update on the virus and to keep panic from taking hold. He talks about the measures the government is taking, educates the public, and tries to put this thing in perspective. She feels like he is offering very good leadership. What a concept.

So what’s our plan? For now, we are remaining flexible but we still plan to sail to Hawaii. Our concerns, however, are two fold: 1) We don’t want to bring the virus from Mexico (where is it surely being way under reported) to anywhere else 2) We don’t want to get sick in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Both of those scenarios would be, as we say, no bueno.

You can see the implications of these concerns. Do we cancel the trip? Do we hunker down in Mexico for another year? Do we go about our business as usual? We do take this disease seriously, but we want to remain balanced in our approach to dealing with this unusual situation. Every day the situation changes, with more and more measures being taken to try to flatten the curve of the outbreak and keep it from becoming completely devastating across the world. While we realize that there is only a very slim chance we would get this virus, we want to mitigate that chance and do everything we can to play it safe on all levels.

Punta Salinas. Galapagos in the distance in her happy place.

So our plan as it stands now is to finish up our time here in La Paz taking care of some stuff we want to do like getting full bloodwork panels because we can get them easily and cheaply here, unlike at home. We’d like to see a dermatologist for skin checks before we leave as well. Then we will leave the Baja Pensinsula and head to the Pacific Coast, ending up in La Cruz down by Puerto Vallarta. We may get a medical letter saying we are well and have no symptoms. We’ll hang out there and after fully provisioning for the long term, we may decide to isolate ourselves on our boat at anchor for up to a week while on the mainland side to give the virus some time to show itself before we leave. In a recent article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, most people begin to show symptoms in about 5 days, with outliers developing symptoms as late as 14 days post exposure.

If we are still symptom free at that point, we are sailing to the Revilligigados Islands, a group of islands in Mexico about 250 miles, give or take, offshore. We won’t be allowed to go ashore there and we can’t think of a better place to isolate ourselves and make sure that we are not carryng the virus into the Pacific Ocean or to other people. If we were to get symptoms during our stay in the islands, we could get back to La Cruz if necessary in a couple of days. If no symptoms emerge, then we go on to Hawaii.

Between the self isolating at anchor on the mainland and the two weeks of isolation in the islands,  we will be well past 14 days of incubation.  That’s long enough to be sure we are not carrying the virus out to sea. If the data on the incubation period changes, we will make adjustments.

Of course, it’s likely other sailboats will be visiting the islands, especially those who are disappointed by not being able to go to French Polynesia this year. If other cruisers are there, we’ll just have to maintain our social distance from them. No cockpit visiting for us. Social distancing is generally much easier for cruisers than for land dwellers. A lot of us are socially distant by nature anyway.  But by the time we get to Hawaii, we are going to be very ready to talk to some other people!

It’s possible that we will monitor our temperature during the passage to Hawaii, recording that on time-stamped video, but we’ll be in touch with the Coast Guard before we leave to see what they recommend, knowing that could change. We will also have the ability to contact the Coast Guard enroute by email or text to keep abreast of how things might change for cruising boats.

This car could be 50 years old. Or 5 years old. The marine environment is harsh at best. Punta Salinas.

The big question for us, and for everyone else, too, is how long this thing will last. If Washington State is still basically shut down in June, will we want to go home at that point? Will we hunker down in Hawaii? That’s not a very cruiser friendly state because there are few anchorages and even fewer marinas with space. If I need to isolate myself on my boat, do I want to go home to do that? So even as we prepare to make this jump to Hawaii, we maintain an eye on what’s happening in the rest of the world.

At the end of the day, even though we feel sure that the virus is alive and well in Mexico, our chances of contracting it are slim. We do our due diligence with hand washing, hand sanitizer, etc. and that’s all we can really do to mitigate getting any kind of illness that is passed from one person to the next. I’ve always been pretty aware of being around people who are couging, sneezing, or otherwise obviously ill, so now I’m on a bit higher alert. Not a lot, but I notice a wee bit more vigilance on my part. It’s a stressful time, to be sure, but we are not going to live in fear of this thing. We’ll just be prudent and aware, and we hope you will, too.

More Sea of Cortez wonder. Punta Salinas.

Here are some soothing and lovely photos taken at Punta Salinas on Isla San José. The psychotherapist in me knows that we all need to be soothed lately. Be sure you are taking time to enjoy sunshine and beauty, flowers, puppies and kittens, humor, and delicious food and drink. If you are in the United States and you have to hunker down at home, be grateful to have time with your self and your families, and allow that gratitude to exist alongside the stress of uncertainties that we are collectively experiencing. It’s ok to feel both kinds of things simulaneously.

Check in with your neighbors to see how they are doing. Allow this time to be one of bringing people together, not tearing them apart, even as we keep our ’social distance’ by keeping our hands to ourselves. In spite of the suffering, and that yet to come, can we allow some grace to come from this? How can you help make that happen? Share your hand sanitizer and toilet paper. Make cookies and good bread to share. Skype with your friends as they go about their day and you go about yours; just keeping each other company. Be kind to the people working long hours in the stores. It’s not their fault the shelves are empty. And have patience with yourselves when you are frightened and worried. This,too, shall pass. And I’d like to think we will be better people for it in the end.

Those colors. Punta Salinas.

Big Big Plans

Posted on by

Here we are again: at anchor in San Carlos, ready to rumble but the weather is giving us no love. We splashed Galapagos bright and early, taking advantage of a two hour window of calm before the next blow came through.ast night, on the hard in the boatyard, we shivered under comforters and blankets, nothing but our noses open to the air, as the boat shuddered on its stands in the wind.

We’re in Mexico. We don’t have our diesel heater ‘ready to go’, as it were, but it sure would not have come amiss as the temperature on the boat plumeted to 51F. This being our third season in Mexico, we’re getting a little thin skinned when it comes to cold weather. Between the unnatural shimmying and shaking of the boat in the wnd and the cold weather, it was a restless night.

Painting the bottom of the house.

Just before first light we got up to prepare for launch. I wore a tshirt, a polar fleece pullover, and a light sweatshirt with a hood on top of that. It was my very first time wearing jeans in Mexico. I held my coffee with both hands, grateful for a bit of warmth as we watched Galapagos trundle down the road on the trailer.

The water was flat calm and there was no wind as we approached the boat launch. This is always good because they launch the boat stern first, which means you have to back out of the fairway and into the main channel. It’s not far, but let me tell you this: if you never seen a full keeled sailboat try to back up in a straight line, you haven’t lived. We’ve launched here 3 times and each time it’s been a no drama event because we always schedule first thing in the morning. And because we were lucky.

This was not the case today. The calm of the water belied the currents of an outgoing tide under the surface and as Mike gave Galapagos a little reverse, just enough to get her moving slowly, the current grabbed us and soon we were almost sideways in the channel, in shallow water. There is no room to turn around in the narrow channel so he brought her up to the dock and tried again. No bueno. Meanwhile I’m running back and forth with our biggest fender hanging over the side, making sure I can fend us off, giving Mike a calm and detailed running commentary about how far off he is from the boat or dock behind us. We’ve got that swim step on the stern of the boat, and at the helm it’s tricky to know just how much room you have when you need every bit of it. (We use those Sena bluetooth headsets ALL THE TIME and will never, ever boat without them by choice.)

It’s best to always be prepared for these scenarios, even when things look like they will literally be smooth as glass. My anxious brain had worried about just this very thing so before we cast off I had that fender out and ready. I used it three times to keep our boat and others safe, dropping it down between the boat and whatever it was we might have hit without it. Three. Who says an overly active amygdala isn’t useful sometimes?

Sporting his ‘naps’ tshirt and his ‘boatyard guy’ look.

After many attempts of forward into the middle, backward too close to the dock, then forward again, we worked our way to the main channel where somehow we had turned just enough for the current to push us in the right direction and off we went, cheers all around from the guys on the dock, no harm, no foul. And now we sit here at anchor listening to the wind howl again and blocking all the ways that cold wind finds to get into the boat. It’s great to be aboard again and we have BIG plans for this season.

Last season was a turning point for us. We had spent two seasons in the Sea of Cortez and Pacific Mexico and we needed to decide what was next. This turned out to be a pretty hard decision. In a nutshell we had three choices: stay in this area for another season, go further south and across the Pacific (which was our original plan), or return to the Pacific Northwest for awhile.

Boatyard horse. Mike shared his apple.

As much as we like the Sea of Cortez, and we do like it, we feel like we are ready to move on for now. So many people leave their boats here all year, returning to their home country during the heat of the summer and coming back in the winter to enjoy the (usually) beautiful weather and the sea. We’ve met lots of cruisers who have been in the Sea of Cortez for 10-20 years. But we aren’t ready to be those people. Maybe later.

After cruising for this long we both realize that the things we love about cruising are only marginally available here in the sea due to weather and water temperature. The cool temperature of the water and the generally marginal visibility (with lucky exceptions) make snorkeling a catch as catch can endeavor, and we both really love to be in the water. We love being able to swim off our boat and not have to don wetsuits. This luxury is available for only a brief time in the Sea of Cortez unless you stay through the very hot months. By the tme the sea is warm enough to enjoy just jumping in, the daytime temperatures are beginning to really heat up. Hiking is beautiful here when you can find a trail or scramble up an arroyo. But not when the weather starts getting hot. The summers are brutal, and we just cannot tolerate them without air conditioning. It’s a beautiful place, really absolutely stunning in so many ways, but for now, after this season we are done for awhile.

Just behind the boatyard, a trail through the desert.

Pacific Mexico, while interesting with all its cool animals, just didn’t make our hearts soar. We enjoyed La Cruz a great deal, but that was mostly due to the community of cruisers there and the excitement of everyone getting ready to do the Puddle Jump. This year we’ll probably be giving that area a miss, even though we have friends who are there and we’d love to see them again.

Our second choice was to go further south and cross the Pacific. This is what we really wanted to do and we began to make plans and get excited about it. Down in La Cruz we went to many of the seminars for people doing the ‘Puddle Jump’ and we had Jamie Gifford come aboard and do a thorough inspection of our rig. As we became more educated about what was required for that kind of extended voyaging, and as we took a long hard look at our boat, we decided this wasn’t our year to cross. There are too many things we feel like the boat needs before we set off for that part of the world.

The things we need to do, like pull the mast and completely refurbish it, replace all the rigging, put in a water maker, do some interior remodeling including replacing the salon cushions, install new radar and anemometer, possibly replace a toilet, get a different dinghy and bigger engine, and a few other bits and pieces, could certainly be done here in Mexico, but it’s harder and many times much more expensive. What’s cheaper in Mexico is labor, but we do our own labor almost all the time. Sourcing things is not easy here and we no longer have a car so we’re either relying on other people or taking local transport. In addition, these things cost money; money we don’t have at the ready without dipping into our retirement savings, and that doesn’t seem prudent at our ages. I know some people claim you can live this cruising life on a wish and a prayer, but we have found that to be completely not true if you want your boat to be safe. It’s just so much easier to work on the boat back home where we will have money coming in, get it really ready, then go.

So that’s what we are going to do. Go back and work for awhile, fill the cruising kitty, get Galapagos better prepared, and then get going again. That’s our plan for now.  If you are reading between the lines and sense a little conflicted heart on my end, you read that right.     This was not an easy decision. If our kids weren’t there, I’m not sure we would have decided on this path. But when it comes right down to it, we need to put money in the kitty.

Now that hard decision has been made there is some excitement about the choice, even as we do not look forward to living on board in the Pacific Northwest winter again. Both our kids are in the Puget Sound area now, and we’re looking at staging the boat in Olympia, WA, close to our Claire and Dan. Andrew and Jill live in Tacoma now and plan to buy their their own boat and live aboard at Foss Harbor marina, where our family has kept boats for well over 10 years.  It does our hearts good to think of being available for that process. I mean, what young couple DOESN’T want mom and dad looking over their shoulders as they dive into the trenches of boat ownership? I mean, we have LOADS of unsolicited advice just waiting to spring forth from our, parental bosom!

We had Christmas this year with all of our Washington family. Claire and Dan had just moved into their house in Olympia and we had no decorations. So Mike made this fireplace mantle and we put on a Youtube fire. It was terrific. Our tree I made from wire garbage cans Claire had. Zip tied together and lit up, it was just about perfect. Cheap Dollar Store stockings completed our decor.

We also have a lot of excitement about how we are getting home! Now the real adventure begins! We are currently applying for our permit to visit the Villagigados Islands, a few hunded miles offshore from Puerto Vallarta. These remote islands are completely protected  by the Mexican Government and offer the opportunity to see some really amazing wildlife, including giant manta rays. We are dead excited to go there and spend a week or two snorkeling.

After that we will begin our trip home. Rather than doing the bash up the coast, which to be honest, I was REALLY not looking forward to (as in “How much would it cost to truck this boat home? Answer: WAY too much.) , we’ve decided to do the ‘Clipper Route’ and sail across to Hawaii, then from Hawaii to the Pacific Northwest. That’s not as long a passage as the south pacific and we feel like the boat is ready for that journey. We’re both excited to get to do a passage of this length without pulling the trigger on the south pacific yet. Actually, we are very stoked about this!

We will be hiring a professional weather router for both legs with a focus on staying comfortable while continuing to have enough wind to sail. Depending, as usual, on weather, our tentative plan is to begin the journey to Hawaii in April, spend some time in Hawaii doing whatever the boat needs for the next leg of the trip and hanging out, and then begin the journey back home in late May.

Gratuitous photo of Claire’s cat.

Until then, we still have another season in the Sea of Cortez and we are ready! We’re going to hang close to San Carlos for a few more days then head across when it looks good.  Our first scheduled stop is Santa Rosalia where we will be putting Galapagos in the marina for a week while we go do some visits with grey whales over in Guererro Negro. I am dead excited! Send us all the good joo joo for a mama whale introducing us to her baby. I might swoon, even with the inevitable whale breath. Baby whales! Oh, my heart!

S/V Galapagos, Standing by on Channel 74