What I Appreciate About Living on Land

My Mum treated us to a very nice lunch yesterday, which was only a short walk from our house in Toronto. As we were finishing I expressed how grateful I was for the lunch. The food and company were of course amazing (as is the food and company in Mexico usually). What I appreciated the most was that we could just walk out of our front door and arrive at the restaurant 5 minutes later in the same state as leaving the house. During boat life, we often arrive wetter, sandier and much sweatier by the time we get to the actual restaurant. The dingy ride from the boat to shore can often be a wet and wild one. I usually relish in that adventure of our boat life, but when we decide we are going to splurge and go out for dinner…it just detracts from the experience if I’m sitting down to eat with wet clothes on from our exciting dingy ride/landing into town. After I expressed how grateful I was for the ease of going out to eat when you live on dry land, my Mum suggested that I make the comment on the blog to give a more well rounded picture of our actual life while sailing. There are a lot of pictures of bright blue skies and smiling faces on the blog. The reason I don’t write more about our boating annoyances/hardships is that I hate complaining. And really how much sympathy am I going to get about eating lunch with soggy clothes on while living our dream aboard Starship ;) ?

I’ve often heard the sailing life referred to as "simple, but not easy". It’s very true! Compared to living on land, our life is much simpler on the boat…but keeping it that way is not easy. For example,the boat’s water, sanitation and electrical systems are much simpler than what you’d find in your house. But having the knowledge, patience and resolution to maintain these systems by our self is not easy. I’m always a bit nervous when something breaks when we’re at a remote anchorage because I know it’s just up to the 2 of us to fix it. There’s no plumber or electrician to call, even if we did have a cell phone. Luckily Chris and I make a very good team solving problems on the boat, with our very different/complimentary approaches. I usually run in a panic to frantically start reading the troubleshooting section of the equipment manual. At which time, Chris calmly comes up with some crazy creative solution off the top of his head. After some discussing, the actual resolution usually lies somewhere in between our two approaches.

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t like dwelling on the "not easy" part because I don’t like complaining. We feel so grateful to be on this wonderful adventure together and that’s what we want to focus on. So instead of having a list of "boating life complaints", here’s my list of  "land life appreciations":

I’M LOVING…

• Sleeping well. Going to bed at night with the peace of mind that your whole home will not move or somebody else’s home will not crash into yours. With high winds, anchors that are not properly set can drag, resulting in a few stressful experiences while aboard Starship.

• High speed Internet. I’ve downloaded over 27 days worth of podcasts to keep us entertained during night watches.

• Phones. What an absolute luxury to be able to call and receive calls from family and friends to “just say hi” and catch up.

• Flat spaces that don’t rock. Doing standing yoga poses on the boat can be quite terrifying unless we’re in the calmest of calm anchorages. I’m so enjoying doing standing yoga poses and single leg squats without the fear of falling overboard.

• Space in general. It really is amazing how much space houses have. After living on Starship, every house and apartment feels like a mansion.

• Swimming in FRESH water lakes. So much more refreshing than salt water!
  

And what I definitely love the most is:

• Family and friends. Getting a hug and kiss from my parents every day and being surrounded by the friends and family that I love

Be prepared for a post about what I appreciate about living on boat in October/November!

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Location:

Toronto, ON

Latitude:

43.728037

Longi tude:

-79.404738

Starship at Rest in Guaymas

Right after Clayton left San Carlos via taxi for the airport, Anne-Marie and I hauled up the anchor to take Starship to Marina Seca Guaymas. It was good to know we could still manage to operate Starship without Clayton's assistance.

The bay and city of Guaymas is very interesting, it is very industrial with the major industry being fish and shrimp processing. There is no tourism industry what so ever, since San Carlos is much nicer and just 20 miles north. The down side of the lack of tourism and the industrial nature of the town was that the bay water was disgusting. The water was brown, and the terrible smell of shrimp boats passing up wind could be smelled a quarter mile away. We heard from one cruiser in the area that a few weeks before we arrived, there was a problem at a fish processing plant and they dumped all their fish into the bay. They said you could practically walk across the bay on top of the fish and the smell was terrible.

Luckily we only spent a couple of days in the bay before being hauled out at Marina Seca Guaymas.

Note to cruisers hauling at Marina Seca Guaymas: Bring your own paper roll and painting tape to cover the travel lift slings, or you will have stripes of bottom paint up your hull!

We decided to put Starship on the hard in Marina Seca Guaymas, the least expensive dry storage yard in Mexico, to escape the summer heat and hurricanes. The restrooms and showers at the yard were surprisingly nice and well cleaned. Gabriel, the owner and manager of the yard, was very nice and helpful. He even arranged for a super long extension cord so a welder could do some work on our boat.
It took us 4 days to decommission Starship, and it was terrible! So exhausting in the 110+ deg heat and humidity, at times we felt on the brink of collapse. Boy were we glad when we got on the air conditioned bus to Phoenix!

In Phoenix we met up with Anne-Marie's best friend Katrina and boyfriend Brian. It was great to see them and go on a trip to Flag Staff and The Grand Canyon. We had lots of great meals and enjoyed driving around in her new car (nacho). P.S. Freeways are terrifying compared to sailing.

When we got back to my home town of Harrow Ontario, my Dad Herb immediately put us to work on a deck he was working on by Lake Erie. It was really nice to spend some time by the water again, but Herb was working us pretty hard. Anne-Marie really enjoyed learning about deck construction and how to use some new tools like a miter saw. After a week of grueling labor the deck was complete!

Now we are in Toronto for a couple of weeks. It is great to have a break from deck building, and to see Anne-Marie's family. We will be bouncing around between Harrow and Toronto for the next month and half until we return to Starship on October 10th. So that is us signing off until the next Mexico cruising season begins in October. Enjoy the remainder of the summer and fall!

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Location:

Guaymas

Latitude:

27.9191

Longitude:

-110.8858

San Carlos - A Pleasant Surprise

When we left Santa Rosalia, we headed eighty miles north to San Francisquito. The first day of the trip consisted of calm winds so we motored all the way to Punta Trinidad (about half way). During this leg of the trip we had more fishing action than the rest of our 5 months combined. Someone had thrown the "switch" we had been hearing about to start the good fishing season apparently.

First Dorado

We caught a 32" Dorado, which was quite exciting to real in compared to our previous skip jacks. Somehow Anne-Marie convinced me that we should put the lures back in, since we could handle one more fish. Despite my better judgement I agreed and we reset the reel and hand line. Thirty minutes later we had two more Dorado on the line simultaneously! One on the reel and one on the hand line. Catching two at the same time hadn't even occurred to me, since our usual problem was never catching anything!

Second Dorado!

The Dorado on the hand line was even bigger, at 36"! Clay pulled it in with ease on the 200lb test hand line. The one on the reel was another story. It was whipping the line off the reel even at maximum resistance. It took all we had to make any progress against it. "Luckily", it solved our problem of too much fish by breaking the line and escaping. It must of been massive, as novice fishermen we should have let it get more exhausted before reeling it in so aggressively... you live you learn you loose lures.

From Punta Trinidad to San Francisquito was uneventful, and we enjoyed a couple days there waiting for a weather window to cross the Sea of Cortez (approximately 80 miles). There are a lot of thunder storms this time of year on the mainland side, and it is best to avoid them while crossing. One day we got up at midnight to inspect the thunder bumper situation, that is what Geary the local weather man calls thunder storms, and it looked relatively calm. We took off into the night at about 1:30AM and had a 16 hour crossing to the mainland. The weather forecast was a bit off unfortunately, and we ended up pounding into the waves all the way there on a close haul (30 degrees off the wind), as opposed to the more comfortable close reach (45-50 degrees off the wind) which was forecast.

Hiking at San Francisquito

The poor weather forecast may have actually been to our benefit though, as we may not have visited some really amazing anchorages north of San Carlos if the wind hadn't blown us more north. Most of the people we have spoken to during our time cruising have told us that there is not much happening on the mainland side of the Sea of Cortez (from Mazatlan north). Which is certainly true when one just looks at the number of anchorages on the mainland side of the Sea of Cortez, but the two anchorages we visited were right up there with the best the Baja peninsula has to offer.

The anchorages we went to were Las Cocinas, and San Pedro. Both had the best water visibility we had seen in the Sea of Cortez so far, and had beautiful red rock formations along the shore. We look forward to sharing this area with Anne-Marie's parents when they come to visit in October.

Las Cocinas 

Sea Caves at Bahia San Pedro

Red rocks at sunset Bahia San Pedro

Sunset Bahia San Pedro

Clay and Starship

Right now we are in San Carlos doing boat projects and preparing to put Starship to bed for the summer. We are getting out just in time (perhaps a little too late!), as the heat is getting excruciating. Even the simplest of boat projects results in sweat streaming off your body. The other day I was just unscrewing our SSB (4 screws), and I was soaked in sweat! That was at 7:30AM... we took the rest of the day off.

Opie enjoys San Carlos! 

We look forward to spending a couple of months back in Canada visiting family and friends. That way we will miss the worst of the hurricane season, and the best of summer/fall in Canada. In mid October the journey will continue, as we explore the Pacific coast of mexico (Puerto Vallarta, Zihuatanejo, etc...) before jumping the puddle.

For more pictures of our trip to San Carlos, checkout the Picasa album (click picture or link below):

Santa Rosalia to San Carlos

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Location:

San Carlos, Mexico

Latitude:

27.9426

Longitude:

-111.0637

Delicious Boat!

Chris and I have been very lucky to see lots of family and friends before we leave. We have also gotten a few very unique gifts. My coworkers gave us a beautifully nautically decorated box with lots of surprises inside. Assuming we cross the pacific, we get to open the box when we cross the equator. It will be a very exciting moment :)

Our friend Sammy made us a delicious gingerbread sailboat. Thanks Sammy!

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Location:

TO Home

Latitude:

43.728003

Longitude:

-79.404588

More Blog Enhancements - Follow Via Email

I have been a little disappointed with the Blogger "Follower" implementation, since there is no way to notify a follower via email when new content is available.

After doing some digging I decided to use FeedBurner instead as a means to update followers via email when new content is available. To signup for this new feed, follow the following steps:

1. Enter your email address in the "Follow via Email" area to the right and click "Subscribe"
2. A pop up will appear and ask you to type in the letters displayed in the picture followed by clicking "Complete Subscription Request"
3. Check your email for the confirmation message, and visit the confirmation link

That is all! You will now receive an email (max one per day, delivered between 5-7am EST) when new content is available on our blog.

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Location:

The Allen House

Latitude:

43.728003

Longitude:

-79.404588

Holiday Fun & Blog Enhancements

So far it has been a great holiday and much needed break from preparing the boat for our upcoming journey.

Anne-Marie and I have been in Canada since December 23rd. We spent the first week in Harrow visiting with my family and are now in Toronto with Anne-Marie's family. It was really nice to see all the family again, some of whom we have not seen since our wedding nearly two years ago.

It was especially nice to be able to spend time with our nephew Quentin (aka Q) while in Harrow. He is growing up to be quite the little man at 4 months already!

I have also been working on some enhancements to the blog which are on display at the bottom of this entry. Now we will be able to include information about our position, course, speed, wind and wave conditions along with a Google map of our position in each posting. For example I have included all the possible data fields so that you can get an idea of what it will look like while we are under way. (NOTE: I re-posted Anne-Marie's first post via this new mechanism)

All the best in the new year!

View Larger Map

Location:

The Allen House

Latitude:

43.728003

Longitude:

-79.404588

Course/Speed:

180M, 5kt

Wind:

10-15kt from NNE

Waves:

5-8ft from N at 15 sec

Visibility:

2NM

Comment:

Cold in the frozen north.