Still in Limbo

We are in one of those harbours--the ones I’ve come to think of as a type of limbo: A place between real cruising and real life, where our days are filled with chores and the intention of simply getting out.

I thought about itemizing the chores we need to finish in order to leave here: do laundry, fix the windless, make the bug screens, write and file stories, etc... But then I looked around—this is a beautiful place with the peaks of mountains catching the evening light and misty desert islands in the distance.

The harbour is calm, we have showers and laundry on shore, we have friends moored beside us, kids for Maia to play with and an entire town within hitchhiking distance. There is really nowhere else we need to be. But even now, a YEAR after we first set out, I find that the push to keep moving is so strong, that it’s hard to simply be here.

 We celebrated our one-year cruisiversary with friends from Hotspur and a coconut cream pie, from scratch--yay me

Part of it is that full-service harbours—those populated places with businesses and useful facilities (although in the case of Puerto Escondido services are limited) are considered, at best, necessary evils for cruisers. The goal is always to be away from it all, out there, somewhere. Because out there is where real cruising happens, it’s the place where we go to explore and relax—it’s the weekend, I guess.

The crazy thing for me is when I’m in a get-work-done-harbour I feel anxious and guilty about relaxing. There is just so much stuff still to do if we are ever going to get going, is the argument I have with myself, even as the temperature rises (is it really, already 34° C, in the shade?) and the day slows. And we subtly pressure each other to get out, to get going. There is nothing more motivating than to overhear other cruisers on the VHF as they discuss bypassing a harbour with the goal of staying out in the islands just a little longer.

My biggest challenge in life is to learn to be comfortable with being still. I learned this when I had my tarot cards read when I was 18. I’m pretty sure I was told other things in that reading that I forgot—maybe that I’d have three marriages, 7 kids and a goat—but the idea that some mystical force recognized what I already knew about myself: that I’m happiest while roaming, was what stuck. It was both liberating and depressing. What about feeling settled and rooted to a place? I asked the man who read my cards. “You’ll have to work at being still to get there,” he told me.

And I will, eventually, I guess. But today, there is so much else to do, because I want to leave here, despite its beauty and undiscovered secrets. But I will practice with being still, just a little bit, just for a moment. And maybe someday it will take.

To Do Mañana…

 Yesterday we headed into town with a list of seven things we needed to do. Then we spent much of the day walking—searching for this and looking for that. But when the day was over our list still had a bunch of things left on it. Plus a few new things we thought of while out.

Part of it’s our own fault. We’re pretty bad at getting going first thing, so by the time we got to town it was lunch time, which meant we needed to stop and eat. And by the time we were done lunch it was nearly time for siesta: that chunk of time from 1-3, or 2-4, or even 11-4:30 when the shops close.

And it was hot, well over 100°F hot, so we had to stop for ice cream and strategize over which order to hit the shops once they opened again. But the thing is, not every shop reopens after siesta. It’s one of those things that depends. On what? I’m not really sure. 

So yesterday we managed three out of the seven things on our list—then we gave up and went to a beachside palapa for margaritas. In the scheme of Mexico, getting almost half a list finished is actually not half bad. But it means we need to head back out today: with four of yesterday’s to do items and three new ones we added.

You see where this is going don’t you? By the time we actually get everything checked off our list we’ll either know every ice cream shop and palapa bar in town, or we’ll just stop caring about getting things done. After all, we can do it mañana...

Well, we bailed

Our goal was to head straight to the anchorages outside of La Paz. The next pictures I planned to post were of us frolicking in azure waters and climbing rugged desert peaks.

Instead we’re sitting in Mazatlan’s rather smelly (thanks to the sewage treatment plant) and busy old harbour--in 100% humidity (the interior walls are wet) grouching at each other.

  We're not keen on night entries, but the wide breakwaters and easy anchorage made Mazatlan a good choice.

We knew the upwind ride to La Paz would be a bash. But when motor sailing at reduced RPMs (for fuel savings) was only netting us 2-3 knots toward our destination yesterday afternoon, we knew something had to give. The 300 remaining miles would take a LONG time at < 3 nautical miles an hour.

We decided to give up motor sailing in a direct line, cracked off to a close reach, turned off the motor and started hitting the high sevens in boat speed. That felt much better, we are a sailboat after all. The problem is La Paz was still directly upwind and with the steep nasty seas our VMG (velocity made good) still had us arriving sometime next week.

This is around the time when I started to wonder if I’d gone soft: If two months in a marina (punctuated by two pleasant day sails) had turned me into a sailor who couldn’t hack a few confused seas. I want to sail around the world for goodness sakes, and here I was finding being tossed made me want to go to bed and wake up after it was over.

While I was busy beating myself up for my wimpyness, I happened to hear two boats hailing each other on the VHF. They complained about what a miserable time they were having. “These seas suck,” was the exact quote. They did suck, which is when we realized that one of our tacks would take us straight into Mazatlan. And Mazatlan started to seem like a really nice place to be.

  The old harbour anchorage puts us between ferry docks and sport fishermen moorings

So we made a night entry, dropped the hook in blessedly flat seas and then woke this morning with mixed feelings. In many ways we made the right choice, the seas and wind built through the night and continued to clock around, probably making the seas an even bigger mess.

But we’re not where we want to be and I feel like we quit.

What time is it?

Most cruisers will tell you that they lose track of time. One of the first items to go from the daily wardrobe (shortly after shoes) is the watch.

Sometimes you do need to know what time it is though. Like when you have a dentist appointment.

The problem is I really don’t know what time it is.

La Cruz is in the state of Nayarit and is currently on Mountain Standard Time (daylight savings hasn’t kicked in yet, I don’t think). Puerto Vallarta is in Jalisco and keeps Central Standard Time. But most of the locals in La Cruz and all of the cruisers keep Jalisco time, while the businesses keep Nayarit time. Got it?

So I had an appointment today at 10am—I just didn’t know which 10am. If it was 10am Jalisco time I needed to go at 9am Nayarit time. But if it was 10am Nayarit time I needed to go at 11am Jalisco time. I think.

Whichever it was, I missed my appointment.

Getting Gone

I’ve had a few people send notes asking us to detail the exact steps we’re taking and list the stuff we’re buying while we prepare to leave San Diego. The thing is everyone has different things on their list at this stage. Ours included getting our Pactor modem running (which it now is – so this means I’ll be able to send and receive work emails over single sideband radio networks), getting our water maker running (check), setting up a downwind reaching pole, sorting out our weather forecasting systems (we’ll be listening to Don from Summer Passage) as well as downloading weather faxes, organizing our paper work (still need to order boat cards… sigh) and stocking up on things that we found were either hard to get or too expensive to buy in Mexico:

favourite crackers and cookies, maple syrup, hard sausages and hard cheeses, batteries and software, favourite treats from Trader Joes, movies and school books, jams and chocolate, wheat free flour and pasta, vitamins and guide books, favourite herbs and spices, dry bunk material, boat parts and fishing gear… 

Personally, I also needed to clear my schedule of deadlines for a few weeks--so I was filing stories and sorting pictures.

The thing is the final to-do list can be a never ending trap--and for lots of people it is. I’m always reluctant to tell people what it is that we are trying to get done because when I do it usually elicits one of three responses: they either think we aren’t doing enough (aka less than what they would do), doing too much (aka more than what they would do) or it sends them into a panic as they realize they totally missed a step that may or may not be important.

Last time we headed south, we spent over a month in San Diego working from dawn to dusk trying to plan for every eventuality and making sure we didn’t forget a single item that we might someday possibly need (I even pre-bought birthday and Christmas gifts). We got caught in the trap of second guessing our list and checking with every cruiser and every book for tips on what we may have forgotten (thank goodness we didn’t have blogs to read to increase our anxiety…)

What we discovered is Mexico (and beyond) had people living there, that we didn’t need to carry enough food to make it for months. There were mechanics and hardware stores so we didn’t need to stock every spare part, or to imagine and prepare for every eventuality. All we really needed to do was know our boat and prepare to be self-sufficient for a few weeks – but not for months or years.

I think cruising is foreign enough that we feel safer and more prepared if we can just make enough lists and buy enough stuff. Because it’s all pretty hard to imagine what it’s really like to untie and let go, we grab on tighter, trying to manage an unknowable future.

But it is unknowable, in a good way. So, I’m sorry to the people who wrote and asked for my list—I don’t really have one that’s universal enough to share. There are books and articles filled with suggestions and ideas, but I think my main message is simply to decide what you need to be comfortable and safe, then pare down the list to the things that are unique to you, your boat and your lifestyle. Then randomly cross off half the things on your list with your eyes closed—you’ll never miss the stuff.

But do make sure you stash away a few treats so that at one of those cruiser potlucks, the ones that happen way far from specialty stores, you can be the boat that brings out the cool appetizer…

Fix, Pray, Sail

Leaving seems to happen in slow stages. There’s the getting ready, the goodbyes and then the sinking in.
The getting ready and the goodbyes were almost the easy parts. Getting ready took focus and dogged determination, but then it was done. And the goodbyes, because we’ve done it before, we know those are temporary.

No, the hard part is the sinking in: The slow realization that we’ve arrived in our life, that this isn’t a one or two year voyage with a predictable conclusion, but a capricious journey that could take us anywhere. I’ve been slow to get to the acceptance part. The trip down the coast pretty much sucked, in many respects. We set off with that smug feeling of knowing exactly what we were getting into and were proved wrong.

It’s hard to be terrified.
It’s hard to have stuff break and wonder if we did something wrong or simply had bad luck.
It’s hard to wonder if we made a huge mistake giving up our home.
It’s hard to hear Maia say she’s lonely.
It’s hard to know there really is no easy way to turn back.

But then there are always those next moments. The quiet contemplative ones that make up everyone’s cruising fantasy--watching the moonrise over a calm anchorage, exploring the beach, sailing in perfect conditions and spending time with good friends, old or new, in beautiful places.

Sarah has been sailing with us twice. When she arrived in Newport Beach before Christmas we had spent almost three weeks just hanging out fixing stuff--happy to stay put. But then the three of us were tentatively ready to go sailing again and she was there to help us along.

We’re not religious but, as I’ve mentioned before, when it comes to setting out on a big ocean in a small boat I’ll take all the help I can get. So Sarah, who’s recently back from Israel, brought help. With a small prayer, she affixed a Mezuzah to the door (we figured it would be okay to put it on the inside seems how the outside would be kind of exposed.) Then for good measure she brought a Hamsa, which is supposed ward off the evil eye and bring us good luck, as well as a very special t-shirt for Maia.

And luck seems to be with us – or at least the evil eye has gone elsewhere for a while. San Diego has been good to us, fellow cruisers (but total strangers), Rick and Sue from Panacea responded to Evan’s online plea for technical help with our Pactor modem and drove out to our marina to trouble shoot the modem, then spent the afternoon driving us around so we could stock up on things for Mexico (we’re filling the lockers with specialty items--appetizer foods, favourite treats, wines, hard cheeses rather than staples). Maia is meeting new friends and is loving her home-based pen pals. I am managing to find some balance in the working while traveling lifestyle. The sun is shining. The boat is in good shape. We’re almost ready to head south again.

We’re out here doing it.

Going Nowhere, again

We’re in Half Moon Bay still. We arrived just ahead of the big swell that makes Mavericks surf break so famous. For 3 days massive swell rolled in across the Pacific and churned up a huge wave. The day we walked out to the point there were a half-dozen surfers out in the 20' swell. They use jetskis to get them in position.

The quiet protected anchorage at Half Moon Bay is a nice change from the noise and excitement of San Francisco. We’ve been getting projects done, visiting with friends and doing a bit of exploring. But we’re ready to go now. Our laundry is done, provisions bought and our next destination is picked out.

Mark and Val's new ridgetop property - lots of potential and lots of work

Unfortunately Mother Nature has her own ideas about these things – and the nice weather window we were planning to head out on (NW 10-20 knots 6-8 ft seas) is due to close before we can make it to Morro Bay – which is the sort of place you don’t want to be entering when the wind is hitting 30kts.

So we’re sticking around. I always find the moment when our plans evaporate, and throw us back into uncertainty the hardest. Guess I’ll learn to embrace it eventually – but I was kind of looking forward to Southern California…

San Francisco Days go on and on...

The weeks seem to be slipping by and here we are - still in SF. No further ahead than we were when we arrived.
Actually - we have made progress:
We have way less money now.
And our mast is held up by shiny new stays and lower shrouds. We're still waiting on the main shrouds because it seems who ever initially did our rig cobbled it together out of parts that our extremely experienced riggers say they have, "never seen anything quite like." So they've had to order a few unexpected things - which of course are on back order.

The upshot is they are impressed we made it as far as we did. Fab.

For the first week we were here I panicked about how far behind our non-schedule we were falling. In fact I was a pretty stressed right up until yesterday. But then, as we paid for an unplanned engine repair and I took on another last minute writing assignment (which will almost pay for the engine repair), I thought about all the loose commitments that pepper our calendar and tried to sort out how we could make it all work.

We can't.

So we've traded the whole non-schedule, schedule for no schedule at all. We're now at the mercy of the wind, our moods and my work schedule. We're not trying for the South Pacific in March, not worrying about where we are for Christmas, heck we're not even sure where we'll be for Halloween - which we're not telling Maia, she's pretty sure we have that one in hand.

It's all sort of freeing - in a disturbing sort of way. I can't quite tell if I'm giving up or letting go - the two things can feel remarkably similar some days.

The thing is, living with this much uncertainty isn't as easy as people think it should be. Consider all those straightforward questions that people ask:
Where are you going next?
Where can we send you mail?
When would be a good time to hang out?
What are you doing tomorrow?
Would you like to order now?

None of them have answers.
None of them.
Well, we're pretty sure we're doing our laundry tomorrow and I'll take a beer, but aside from that, Maia's Magic 8 ball has a better chance of predicting the future than we do.

Best Laid Plans...

Things don’t always go as planned.
This is a truism that works for just about everybody, but when you’re out cruising it’s even truer…

Pretty much the first thing that every offshore sailor learns is not to plan. Yes, you need a general idea of where you want to go and when you might like to get there but if you insist that the two things (the where and when) need to coincide, you’re asking for trouble, or at the very least an uncomfortable trip.

This is why we’re still in Coos Bay. A place we never intended to stop, and that really never warranted a week or more out of our lives, but that has kind of grown on us.

We’ve announced our departure from the dock a few times now. The first time we had a weather window I got a sudden assignment with a pressing deadline. Weather windows crop up with some regularity, but every assignment is precious, so we skipped our departure and I put in some computer time. It turned out to be a good decision because a boat that left during that same so-called weather window got pasted – an experience we’re typically not keen on and are especially trying to avoid until our rigging is redone.

Departure number two was cancelled when we decided that a rather benign sounding weather report had a sinister undertone to it. Neither of us was really sure what the problem was, but there was something hinky about the lack of information on the after midnight part of the report. In other words – the weather was fine, we were nervous.

But today, today is perfect. A high has filled in. The sky is bright blue. The winds are whispering in the lightest, most gentle fashion. The seas are barely swelling and it’s all scheduled to stay this way. It’s all we can ask for when embarking on a trip south with an unreliable rig.

So we started doing our predeparture stuff early in the morning: Downloading a few podcasts to listen to on night watches (why not use the midnight hour to get a bit smarter?); cooking a few underway meals; tiding up the boat and overhauling the diesel heater (just in case the nights are chilly…)

I was down in the galley wondering why my milk (for scalloped potatoes – always soothing for sensitive, slightly seasick tummies) had a black film on it, while Evan was cheerfully vacuuming out the built-up soot from the heater. Then I looked up and gazed through a grey haze that was reminiscent of the coal fogs in England that followed the Second World War (gotta love the information gleaned from a podcast…) I asked Evan if the vacuum was working and he insisted the haze was caused by smoke, likely by something I was cooking.

I wasn’t cooking.

The vacuum hadn’t liked sucking up soot and in protest it pulverized the oily carbon and sent it out in a cloud of sticky, fine, black nastiness that coated every surface of the boat's interior, including the cat, who was leaving cute little black footprints everywhere he went as he tried to avoid black lung.

Considering we’re at a dock, which has ample fresh water and a laundry facility with the cheapest machines we’ve yet to encounter, our decision was made for us. We stayed. We turned on the podcasts I had painstakingly downloaded (on the slowest connection imaginable!) and began to scrub, and scrub and scrub. And then scrub some more.

The moral (there’s always a moral) is not what you think. Sure plans are always subject to change, and the best laid plans oft go awry, and life is what happens when you’re busy making plans… But I’m not about to give up making plans - because they're important. They get you from A to B and then motivate you push on to C even when B has cheap beer, and easy anchorages, and nice people. They inspire you and give you the feeling that you’re really living and experiencing all that life offers the very best way you know how. Plans are what assure you that you're not just scratching the surface of life, that you're getting down into the juicey bits, and savouring the parts that really make it all worthwhile.

No, the moral isn’t about not making plans and not having goals, it’s simply about letting goals go when they don’t work out. It’s about enjoying the podcast while you clean the boat and then using the free afternoon to head out for icecream after doing laundry. It's about not regreting the moments you didn't get and the sights you didn't see. It’s about believing that weather windows will come again and that you’ll leave tomorrow.

10:00 AM

We were up early again today.
There was no sunrise this time, just sort of a gradual brightening of the grey drizzle. Even though the weather is still acting a lot more like October than we’d like, it’s time to move on. We need to get a bit closer to Neah Bay so that when (if?!) we do get a break in the lows that are marching across the Pacific, we can make a run south.

So we were up at our version of the crack of dawn: 8ish.

We’re not good at getting an early start. I’m not sure why. We’re both more than capable of waking up early to get to say, the airport. But when it comes to getting the boat underway before 10am, we can’t do it.

We’ve tried.

On little Ceilydh we often had passages that would take us about 15 hours. So our thought was that if we could get underway just before the sun rose, we’d be anchored and sipping sundowners when the sun set. Inevitably though we’d sleep through the dawn, wake to bright sun and end up dropping our hook by spotlight.

But today we were up early. And unlike most days, when we watch an anchorage empty out while we’re still in our pyjamas, today we were one of the first boats to get moving. Our first stop was the fuel dock. After two solid days of gales we knew that it wouldn’t take long before the dock had a huge queue. So while the other boats slumbered, we ate our oatmeal and then dressed in our cozy foulies so we could pull up our anchor and get there first.

Then it all went to hell.

For whatever &?&!!*#! reason the !*#$!! crab fishermen lay their traps right through the anchorage. We know this. We watched in shock as one went blasting through the crowded harbour tossing out his line of traps all willy nilly. I think we planned to make a mental note to be aware of this when we pulled up anchor. But it was early and we were sleepy. And we caught one of the lines – but failed to notice it until it was well and truly wrapped around the propeller.

Evan was able to slice the line but when he started untangling it, we discovered that somehow one end of the line had worked its way deep into the cutlass bearing – which for you non-nautical types, is a bad thing. So we re-anchored the boat using the outboard. Then I took a good long swig of my cold coffee (pretending it was something stonger) and we both wondered just how many days and how much money a stupid peice of rope would set us back…




As a last ditch effort before looking for a shipyard that could haul us, we led the crab trap line to a winch and then gave it an almighty tug - pulling it free. Then we tried running the engine and to our shock and delight there seems to be no ill-effect. So we pulled the anchor back up (checking carefully for crab trap lines), joined the now long line for the gas dock and filled up our tanks when our turn came.

Then we headed out of the anchorage – just as my watch said 10am.