A Big Day

Today is a big day. Actually, if I'm going to be completely honest here, tomorrow is a big day. My guess is that I'm not going to have any time to write this tomorrow, because of the whole big day thing, so I'm jumping the gun and pecking away at the keyboard today. While you are reading this, just imagine that today is tomorrow and all will be right in the world.

So what's the big deal you ask? Well, there are 2 big deals today. First and arguably less important of the 2 items is that on this day exactly 3 years ago, I cleaned out my desk, I handed over my keys to the office, and I worked my last day of work. It took another couple of months of work to finish preparing the boat and get rid of all of our junk before we officially left on our big adventure, but the fact that I didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn, fight traffic, and punch a clock anymore was huge. It was probably the biggest and hardest single step towards us leaving that I can think of. Quitting the safety and security of a job and losing the all important income was terrifying and liberating all at once.

I could probably write an entire book about what it means to me to not be wasting away at job that I didn't find satisfying and moving on to a life lived fulfilled, but I'm not going to do that. And I'm sure you are getting tired of me going on and on about how much fun we are having, so I just want to say that leaving the humdrum and setting out on a grand adventure was the best thing we ever did. There hasn't been one day where we wished we were doing something else.

I know a lot of you think we just sit on the boat drinking margaritas all day while listening to Jimmy Buffet, however, if you think that you would be completely wrong. First of all, Jimmy Buffet is banned from our boat. There is a stigma that comes with Jimmy and cruisers. Nearly all of the times I've heard his music in the last 3 years has been tied to an overly intoxicated and overly obnoxious sailor who is blaring the music through what would have been a quiet and pristine anchorage while wearing an equally obnoxious Hawaiian print shirt. And second of all, Brenda generally prefers Pina Coladas and I prefer a nice cold root beer (they are incredibly hard to find in Mexico). But more than that, we still have some things we do on a day to day basis that are just like the things you do – such as laundry.

We have a washing machine on our boat, and I'm not going to lie, it's a huge luxury. But for us to use that washing machine, we need to make a whole lot of water with the watermaker and we need a whole lot of power either from the solar panels or the generator. When we use it, we are happy about it. But when we are in a Mexican town with a “lavanderia”, we use that service instead. A lavanderia will wash, dry, and fold your laundry for a fraction of the cost of what we would pay to waste a whole day in the States sitting at a laundromat. And here, you have the added benefit of not only supporting a Mexican family business, but you also have the thrill of wondering if all of your clothes are going to come back to you (sometimes), if your whites will be turned pink (yes), and what treasures from somebody else will end up in your clothes (this time it was a green hand towel – you can never have enough of those).

As I was zipping along in the dinghy towards shore this morning, taking our laundry in to the local “lavanderia”, cutting through calm glassy water as fast as our little dinghy would go, 6 pelicans swooped down right along side of me. The feathers from the tips of their wings were just grazing the surface of the water as they glided within just a couple of feet of me, and instantly it felt like I was flying with them. The sound from the outboard seemed to disappear and I let out an uncontrollable “woooooo hooooo!!!”. I was flying with some pelicans, what else was I supposed to yell? But at that moment, I realized that this is normal life for me. I could hardly remember what it was like to go to work and to worry about things that no longer seem important. My schedule is based on when our visas expire and when hurricane season starts, traffic has to do with how many dinghies are heading to shore from the anchorage to get tacos, and my job, well, for today it was to fly with some pelicans and to drop off our laundry. 3 years has been good to me.

You might think that having 3 years off of work is a big enough story to talk about for one day, but it's not. The really big news, and arguably more exciting than the fact that I haven't had a job in 3 years, is the fact that some of our favorite people on earth are coming to visit us today (tomorrow...if you payed attention at the beginning of this nonsense you get a gold star, and you would remember that I'm writing this a day early...by saying today, I actually mean tomorrow). We've had quite a few good friends visit us in various locations during our last 3 years of adventuring, but this will be the first group of visitors we'll have on the boat with us in Mexico. We're pretty excited about it. We are thrilled.

For the next week, we'll stuff our faces with tacos, we'll sail the high seas, we'll swim in warm tropical waters, we'll fly with pelicans, we'll search the estuaries for crocodiles, and we'll explore the beauty of Mexico while butchering the Spanish language. It will be normal life for us, but it will be better than normal because we'll have our good friends here with us. Yeah, we're pretty excited.

Hangin' with our friends from S/V Danika, Agape, Halcyon, and Easy at Secret Beach (don't tell anyone...It's a secret).

Secret Beach.  I'm serious, don't tell anyone.

I'm really not kidding.  It's Secret Beach.  Don't tell a soul.

This guy makes the best tacos in Barra de Navidad.  I'm pretty sure the extra flame and the fact that his BBQ is a wheel off of his car is what makes them taste so good.

Here is our newest addition to our video family.  If the link below doesn't work on your device, copy and paste this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9xnhYiLdfA