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Hello, Good-bye La Paz

Jan 20th, 2012
by Sara.
1 comment

I’ve been meaning to write to you about the week we spent on Islas Espiritu Santo and Partida after we crossed over from Mazatlan. These are the two stunning desert islands dressed in layers of pink that lie just north of La Paz. I was going to write about how we were the only boat anchored at Bahia San Gabriel, how “winter in the Sea” stills feels like the hottest NW summer day, how we played in the clear turquoise water that was — admittedly — a little too crisp for venturing out of the shallows. How we buried each other in the soft powdery sand, hiked through giant cactus, and generally just lazed around in the sun admiring the view. I wanted to remember the feeling of our souls recharging, and feeling immensely grateful for being able to visit this very special corner of the earth together as a family.

Until now, we’ve been busy in La Paz this past week getting our chores done so we can head back out again which is exactly what we’re doing in the morning. So we can get back to this:

Ghosts, Doubt, and a Green Corduroy Couch

Jan 8th, 2012
by Sara.
8 comments

Last night, during my almost-midnight watch they appeared again. We are nearly halfway across the Sea of Cortez. The water is smooth as glass and we are motoring along. Clouds are scattered around the almost-full moon and diffuse the light so it feels like it is a silvery version of twilight. The sea is soft ripples of various shades of silver and the air is so still the hazy shapes of the clouds are reflected in the glassy surface.

I sit in the cockpit underneath the dodger so as to avoid the quickly settling dew, and the noise of the engine, Deb Talen singing in my ears. Suddenly, I am surrounded by them, the ghosts I mistakenly thought I could leave behind when we left to go sailing last year. Here, completely alone a hundred miles from land they loom larger than ever: relationships that are unmendable, phone calls I can’t seem to make, people I’m losing touch with, the eternal absence of my mother.

Part of heading off to sea was to leave these things behind for a while, thinking the farther away from the location they first appeared the dimmer they will become. But that’s the funny thing about the sea: things you want to leave behind don’t fade in the distance, they get magnified and on a night when you are alone with nothing but the moon and a mirrored ocean, they are smothering.

I close my eyes and try to wish them away again, but that’s when the largest ghost of all creeps into the cockpit and sits down right next to me. Doubt. I was tucking Leah into bed last night and she told me, “Mom, I hate dawn watches,” referring to a book we’ve been reading her since she was a toddler about a girl helping her dad on his watch during an overnight passage. “I don’t like rolling around in my bed and the loud noises.” I tried to console her, saying we only had one more night until we reach La Paz, and then no more dawn watches for a couple more months.

But my daughter’s unhappiness haunts me. I know she still misses her friends back in Olympia, her grandpa and his new wife, her uncles. She misses snow and even rain. She is confused by the seemingly random way we say hello and goodbye to the new friends we are making in this nomadic life. I can relate, I miss all this too.

Michael and I have talked about whether this life is right for our children, to be constantly on the move without a real sense of home except for our small boat. Cruising is so full of highs and lows, amazing places and experiences. But these come at a cost that is sometimes very dear.

Then again, this will all be over before we know it. We’ll be at work and school again wistfully reviewing our memories and photos of the amazing years we spent on the sea. And be dreaming of leaving again. But still, some nights the doubt looms largest and it sounds so delicious to just stop, to settle in another cottage in the woods and spend the winter in front of a warm wood stove, safe and content. People that say, myself included, that the most difficult part of cruising is tossing off the dock lines forget that the hardest part is really keeping on.

When we lived ashore, we bought this used green overstuffed corduroy couch from Craigslist. We loved that couch; it was already well worn in when it came to live with us, so soft. A huge L shape, so it could hold everyone with their legs stretched out even. Sometimes, Michael and I will reminisce about sitting there again: warm, dry, still. But it was on that couch that this whole plan was hatched; we rented Michael Palin’s old BBC travel shows one winter, when Holly was just a newborn. We watched them sitting on that couch and a fire was lit. We realized our tucked-away dream of sailing again was what we really wanted, not the security of our small quiet home. We wanted adventure, to leave it all behind and sail the world with our small children. I’m sure you can see the irony too, of craving that couch while on the deck of our sailing boat.

So here I am, at sea, having adventures. So very far from any sense of home, so much more riding along in this boat with us than I ever thought there was room for.

Merry Christmas from S/V Wondertime!

Dec 24th, 2011
by Sara.
6 comments

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our friends and family both new and old! The temperature is forecast to be 83°F tomorrow here in Banderas Bay and we’ll probably go to the beach after opening the gifts from Santa and enjoying a nice breakfast. But tonight, our little family gathered around our mast-tree, ate gingerbread cake warm from the oven and watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The girls left out a plate of cookies and chocolates for Santa (we assured them 7 cookies would be plenty) and little notes and drawings for the jolly guy. Despite our missing our families this year and it feeling like a Seattle August in December, it really did seem like Christmas tonight. We hope you are having a wonderful holiday too.

A tale of two windlasses

Dec 14th, 2011
by Sara.
1 comment

Looking back on all that needed to fall into place to get us where we are today — swinging in the hammock at anchor in our underwear in Banderas Bay 10 days before Christmas — we are continually amazed at all the serendipitous events that have occurred along the way. Even now as we approach our 6-month cruising anniversary we have been blown away at the good luck? divine intervention? that is keeping us going. When our windlass decided to throw in the towel 300 miles south of San Diego we started scanning the horizon for luck as we sure didn’t have any idea what else to do.

Wondertime came equipped with a manual Simpson Lawrence Seatiger 555 windlass. (For the non-boaties: this is basically a big winch that lives on the bow whose job is to hoist up hundreds of feet of our anchor chain and our 55 lb. anchor when it’s time to move on. “Manual” means it uses arm power, not electricity, to get the job done.) These units are legendary for being bulletproof and trustworthy and offer up a nice upper body workout to boot.

We had the same simple windlass on our previous boat, Pelican; we always were happy with the unit as it never let us down and were glad that Wondertime came equipped with the same model. Over the past months of putting our current windlass into full time use, however, it became clear that either we weren’t as strong as we were in our 20s (probably true) or our trusty winch was getting crankier and crankier. It continually has become more and more difficult to hoist up the anchor chain. Michael would fill the unit with fresh grease and it would improve for a bit but the windlass has continually been getting stiffer and even starting to jam if cranked too quickly.

In San Diego we put “replace or repair windlass” at the top of the list. It’s true we did search online and phone a variety of used marine gear stores for a replacement Seatiger but came up empty-handed. These units are now out of production, however we could buy a new one from a fellow in Scotland who used to work for Simpson-Lawrence and keeps a stock of spares and occasionally has an entire new 555 for sale — for about $3200 shipped. With this price in mind we started looking at installing a new electric (hurrah!) windlass but since our Seatiger fits perfectly on top of our bowsprit we’d have to do quite a bit of engineering to fit a different model of windlass.

With all this taken into consideration we made the — rather silly in hindsight — decision to do…nothing. At the time it made perfect sense: since we couldn’t fix it now we’d fix it later. Really though, we just hoped it would crank the chain up a few more times until we could get somewhere in Mexico where we could take the unit apart and have it rebuilt, the most economical solution.

It really is more fun to work on your boat in exotic places, even if a West Marine is nowhere nearby

In Turtle Bay, however, it was agonizingly slow as the windlass jammed again and again when we hoisted our chain the day we needed to move to the south side of the bay in anticipation of a southerly blow coming through the bay the next day. Clearly, it wouldn’t be prudent to put the project off any longer; if we needed to leave an anchorage quickly, say strong winds blowing through in the middle of the night as often happens off Baja, we would have to pull the chain in by hand or possibly be forced to drop our anchoring gear if conditions were bad enough.

It was largely for this reason that we sailed directly from Bahia Magdalena to Banderas Bay, which contains a plethora of services for cruisers and where we hoped to get our windlass rebuilt. We pulled into the marina in La Cruz near our friends on Del Viento and after the girls ran off to play we mentioned to Del Viento Michael that our first job here was to fix or replace our windlass (now feeling more than a little depressed that we’d not taken the job more seriously in San Diego). He told us: “Hey, I think there was a guy selling that same model at the swap meet last weekend. I almost bought it — he was only asking $150 — it seemed to work perfectly!”

Our spirits buoyed, Wondertime Michael borrowed their dinghy to zip out to the anchorage where the seller was moored to see if he still had the windlass, but he wasn’t home at the time. The next morning we got on the 8:30 am cruiser’s VHF net and asked about the windlass and if it was still available to which another cruiser replied “Sorry, but I bought it!”

Dammit.

Our new-to-us Seatiger 555 is installed and we are anchored out again. (Why do we have toothpick-encrusted swim noodles strapped to our bow? Because pelican poop is really hard to scrub off the bowsprit and pelicans hate toothpicks in their feet!)

So we were quickly on to Plan B. After a few days at the dock we figured that we may as well go out and anchor, drop the chain with the windlass and then take it off to start the process of rebuilding it. We found a nice spot on the outer edge of the anchorage, set the hook well and then Michael got busy taking off the old Seatiger. He’d just got it removed when suddenly there was another boat right next to us. Turns out we’d anchored next to someone on 300′ of rode who had a WIDE swinging circle and we’d need to re-anchor.

This time, Michael did pull up the chain by hand and we promptly motored back to the dock as he swore he’d never do that again.

We pulled into a slip on dock 4 (the lower rent district, the marina office had informed us as we’d left dock 9 earlier in the day). Some nearby cruisers came over to help us with our lines.

“Oh boy!” one of the chaps said when he saw the mess on our bow. “You really do need that windlass more than I do!”

Turns out he was the one who’d bought the used Seatiger at the previous week’s swapmeet with plans to rebuild it one day. And he kindly sold it to us for the same price he paid. We were floored to say the least.

Our new-old Seatiger 555 is now securely mounted atop our bow and is as smooth as can be and hoists our chain and anchor up in no time. Another stroke of serendipity — not to mention the outrageous kindness of fellow sailors — and we’re ready to go again.

Racing Out of Our Comfort Zone

Dec 4th, 2011
by Sara.
2 comments

“There’s cheap beer and tacos up at PV Sailing tonight!” announced our new friend and La Cruz dock neighbor Tami on Andiamo III one afternoon last week. Without thinking twice, we packed up the kids and headed over.

It turned out to be a meet and greet for cruisers and local sailing vendors and we enjoyed meeting all sorts of new folks. And while the beer was very cold and cheap and the tacos muy delicioso, the goal for the evening was to get boats to sign up for the Banderas Bay Blast, a four-day charity fun-race being held the following week.

As dusk fell, the girls were tired and had had enough of our yakking and we quietly snuck out with them. “It would sure be fun to do a race like that someday,” I said to Michael. “Hey…maybe we should do it now?”

“Let’s go for it!” he replied and I ran back inside to put our name down on the list of race boats.

One of our goals for this trip is to not pass on opportunities that lie outside our comfort zone, which we tend to want to do, as do most people I assume. There’s been a number of chances we could have taken in the past – both large and small – and few things are worse than regret at “what would have happened if we had…?” Whether it’s taking a job opportunity in Alaska, or sailing across an ocean, or just talking to someone we really want to meet, we are learning not to let these types of adventures pass us by.

Riding a panga in through the Punta Mita surf to the after-race moonlit beach dinner

Sailing in the Banderas Bay Blast was not to be one of them. Believe it or not, it was the very first time I have ever raced a boat and Michael’s first since he was a kid. We were a little nervous at what to expect as we motored Wondertime up to the start line but with the help of our crew (the Del Vientos, who we originally met in Olympia when they drove through in their car on their way to their boat in Mexico and who our girls are over the moon to have now reunited with in La Cruz) we soon had the sails up and were across the starting line right on time. With a bow full of giggling girls, we tacked back and forth across sunny and warm Banderas Bay all afternoon, making our way to Punta Mita and the finish.

We certainly weren’t the first to cross the finish line, and it’s entirely possible we were the last in our class, but we didn’t care. It was an awesome challenge sailing upwind in very light air (yes, we can point higher than the big cats!) and as we and our crew took a panga ride to shore through the Punta Mita surf for dinner on the beach we were all grinning ear to ear.

The following day was the final leg, a downwind spinnaker run to Paradise Village (this one with just the Wondertime crew aboard). Once again, our sailing skills and patience were challenged as we struggled to keep the boat moving at a decent pace in the 5-8 knots of wind from astern. In the end, we folded that race as we were moving 1.5 knots still 6 miles from the finish with the time limit looming. No matter, we were hardly bummed at getting to our free slip at Paradise, enjoying a scrumptious dinner at the Puerto Vallarta Yacht Club and taking a dip in the huge pool.

While the two free slips and three parties had enticed us at the beginning to sign up for the Blast, it really was the racing that we’ll remember. I dare say that our sailing skills have improved a touch with the added factor of competition thrown in. I mean, we gybed our cruising spinnaker in three minutes flat! While Michael and I have sailed together as a team for years, it was an entirely new experience to try to do things quickly – which is what you do in a race it seems but not too often when sailing a slow cruising boat southward — and remain calm at the same time. And definitely not least, we also had an amazing day of taking our new friends out sailing.

As always happens when we don’t let an opportunity pass by, we gain much more than we ever think we will.

Click here for Latitude 38’s coverage of the Blast (with photos of the Wondertime girls tossing water ballons at the Poobah and Wondertime at the start line!)

Photo by Gato Go

A Third Birthday in Magdalena Bay

Nov 23rd, 2011
by Sara.
1 comment

“What do you want to do for your 3rd birthday Holly?”
“I want to jump in the waves!”
“OK!”

When I wrote Holly’s birthday down on our family calendar months ago, turning the pages ahead to November, I had no idea where we would be when our little curly-haired sprite turned three. I tucked away some cake mix, some pink frosting with sprinkles (her choice) and a few gifts in preparation for Holly’s day.

Small sweet gifts from new friends

As it turned out we were in Magdalena Bay for the celebration. On her birthday morning, Holly opened her gifts, we enjoyed fresh scones with butter and jam and then set off for — where else? — the beach. We’d spread the word to the few other cruising boats also anchored in Man o War Cove and as we stood on the shore watching them come in by dinghy, Holly jumped up and down with excitement that all her “best friends” were on their way to her party. With a small picnic in tow, we hiked across the isthmus to the Pacific side, the southernmost beach of Bahia Santa Maria.

The water was turquoise and warm, the sand like flour, and the waves just the right size to jump through and ride in to shore a little ways. Our new friends brought little gifts and cards for Holly, so touching and sweet and it made her feel very special. After dinner that night she blew out her three candles on her pink sprinkled cake, grinning from ear to ear.

Third birthdays are the best: they are the first one that a kid truly understands, when they know that it’s their special day. I think this particular one was one of my favorites as well. Simple, low cost, fun, memorable. And most of all our three-year-old was filled with joy the whole day long during our celebration of her.

The Hum of Southern California

Oct 22nd, 2011
by Sara.
1 comment

We’ve been in Southern California for a week and a half now. We wanted to love it down here, what with all the sunshine and palm trees and beaches. Trips down here in years past hold memories of wild times. Perhaps we are different people now, as we find ourselves only wishing to experience the wild again.

It’s a bustling coastline, bursting with people, cars, stores, buildings, houses, highways and every now and then a green park. Every time we find ourselves in port, as we are now in San Diego, we can’t help but write out a list of Things That Must Be Done/Bought/Fixed Before Leaving wherever we happen to be. Then we walk around as fast as we can and check them off, dragging our young charges with us, dangling the promise of an ice-cream cone in front of them.

It’s enough to make one dream of islands, of deserted beaches, of quiet protected harbors, of silence. We remember all our weeks up in the splendor of British Columbia and our heart hurts for the memory of beauty and stillness that seems impossible now. Maybe that is homesickness.

But there are islands ahead, and beaches and beauty and wildness. One more week of checking the items off our list, a night of trick-or-treating, then we’ll sail to Mexico. There is a hum of excitement aboard, that sometimes drowns out the exhaustion. We are surrounded by boats at the police dock here also in the last throes of preparations to head south, to a country that really feels foreign and doesn’t have fog. The energy is contagious. We’re almost there.

A cruising kid’s dream anchorage

Jul 22nd, 2011
by Sara.
2 comments

While Holly was napping today Michael, Leah and I were enjoying the afternoon sun in the cockpit. Michael was spying around our anchorage here in Cadboro Bay with the binoculars. He stops his scanning suddenly in the far end of the bay.

“A playground!”

The dinghy is launched and when Holly is up a shoreside excursion commences.

The girls of s/v Wondertime rate Cadboro anchorage as one of the best ever.

Whitecaps

Jul 21st, 2011
by Sara.
Comments are off for this post

We had motored away from Sidney Spit in a dying westerly breeze. An hour before I had tucked away everything below, expecting a romping beam reach but now that we were underway the wind had decreased to…nothing at all. But once we were out of Sidney Channel and into Haro Strait we found our wind.

Forecast wind today in Haro Strait: 15-20 knots southwesterly. A fine wind to make our way south again towards Victoria, then west out the Straits this weekend. We raised our full mainsail and the genoa. Ten minutes later someone opened the faucet and more wind came pouring across the Sannich peninsula, then even more. Wondertime careened to port and all that I’d overlooked tucking away came hurtling downwind as well. I checked on Holly napping in her bunk, then Leah playing in our protective bunk. I told her that she’d want to stay in there for a while and she told me no problem and went back to playing her Leapfrog.

Back outside, we reefed the mainsail down all the way, furled the genoa and unfurled our tiny staysail. Michael went below to check the chart and I was alone with the whitecaps.

With less sail up, Wondertime only heels slightly. The autopilot steers the boat easily and her motion is smooth and even. The waves are choppy with the opposing current but we slice right through most of them. Even so, when the wind comes like this, I shiver and grit my teeth. I am afraid: of more wind, of something breaking, of not knowing what will happen next. The wind howls. Wondertime cuts through a wave and the spray is thrown into the cockpit. I duck behind the dodger a little too late and taste salt. This does not help the shivering.

More wind comes pouring over us. I can hardly believe it. Paradoxically my nerves calm as I see we are only a few miles from the sheltered bay we will anchor at tonight. (When we arrive, we check the buoy reports and find it’s 34 steady, gusting 40 just south of us outside of Victoria). We are also tucked behind the lee of the land and the waves have gotten smaller. Wondertime continues to jaunt along close-hauled at 6 knots like she’s pleased as punch. All the wind being hurled at us seems a bit silly now. We can do this.

More gusts, higher gusts. Wondertime shimmies, she skirts around like a filly trying to shake off a bit. She seems…uncomfortable, restless. Michael and I furl the staysail until it’s the size of a hankie.

Then the boat is satisfied again, and continues on her merrily way south. I am satisfied too. I trust we’ll make it.

A light, a friendship, and a job done

May 2nd, 2011
by Sara.
2 comments

Eric and Angela, s/v Rouser (Tenacatita)

When we were getting ready to set off cruising in 2002, we received an innocent email from a couple also gearing up to head south that year. The crew of s/v Rouser, Eric and Angela, lived south of us in Olympia (we were still in Seattle at the time), had just found our blog, and were excited to find another couple getting ready to set sail that was also well south of retirement age (27). Since we had never sailed to the south Puget Sound before, we took a week in late July that year to meander down that way and get a personal tour of the town of Olympia from our new friends. We hit it off right from the start and made plans to meet up again in San Francisco in a few weeks. Which we did: right after Michael and I passed under the Golden Gate, Eric and Angela zoomed out in their dinghy off Sausalito to greet us, having arrived the week before.

We sailed together for the most part of the next six months, exploring southern California and the Channel Islands, sailing across the US/Mexican border together, Baja California, crossing over to mainland Mexico to Puerto Vallarta, then down to our most southern anchorage of Tenacatita, where we stayed for a month in January-February 2003. I remember countless evenings spent with what soon felt like old friends: laughter and food and drinks, hikes, exploring small dusty Mexican towns, our New Years road trip inland to Guanajuato, bonfires and music on the beach, sailing side by side to a new destination.

And then, as it always does with while cruising, it came time to say farewell. Rouser was preparing to puddle jump to the Marquesas that spring and had decided to sail farther south to Zihuatanejo to depart from. We were heading north to spend spring in the Sea of Cortez. The day had come when we had to part ways.

It was a teary afternoon; we said our goodbyes quickly. We said we would keep in touch via email (which we did) and visit together in the future (which we have). Angela is from Minnesota so we gave them a copy of Lake Wobegon Days to read on their way across the much bigger lake. They gifted us with a nice tri-color/anchor light that they had as a spare, inscribed. I think Michael had always lamented that Pelican did not have a tri-color at the top of her mast, which would be much more visible at night than our deck-level navigation lights when sailing. We were touched that our friends wanted us to be visible too.

Eric and Angela made it all the way to New Zealand, and we made it all the way back to Seattle. Our gift never made it to the top of Pelican’s mast for reasons I can’t recall now. But we’ve toted that bubble-wrapped light around with us for eight years, through another boat and two houses. Now on Wondertime we were hardly surprised to find out that she didn’t feature a nice tri-color light, but a burned-out rusty single anchor light at the top of her mast.

Now she does. Our beloved gifted tri-color light is sporting new high-efficiency LED bulbs up at the top of Wondertime’s mast. We now shine brightly in the night sky. Friendship made visible.

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