A Shopping Spree

Before I get into what's happening with us, I just want to quickly respond to the handful of emails and texts I've gotten over the last couple of days regarding tropical storm Adrian which formed near Guatemala and is heading toward Mexico. As you probably know by now, Mexico is where our little floating home and us are currently residing. If you are following the news on this weather system, you have probably heard that it is officially the earliest formed tropical storm in recorded history, and that by all estimations, it is expected to be upgraded to a full fledged hurricane in the next few days. Before I go any farther, I should tell you that we are perfectly safe and a long way from this storm. If this storm would have formed a week ago, before we made a big hop north to La Paz, I would have been sweating bullets, but from where we are located now, I'm not too worried...at least not too worried for us.

Every sailor cruising Mexico's waters has to make some hard decisions regarding what to do during hurricane season, and more importantly, when to make those decisions happen. We have statistical data showing when and where hurricanes have formed, their paths, and their strengths. Historically speaking, May is considered a pretty safe month to be making your move to whatever area you are planning on spending the summer to avoid a hurricane. Unfortunately, this May is not looking like it's going to follow historical norms.

Since this is our first year sailing in a region with hurricanes, and having grown up in Seattle where the weather is pretty much always rainy but benign, we played it safe and started sailing north early with the plan of getting north of La Paz by the beginning of June. When we started sailing north, we both felt like we were rushing things by not taking our time and seeing some things along the way, because statistically speaking, we still had a month or so of time before the season really gets into full swing. But again, we thought we should play it safe, so we went for it. Now that we are anchored in La Paz and see a possible hurricane forming not too far from where we were a couple of weeks ago, we feel pretty good about making the strong push north early.

Even though we are sitting pretty in a place where we feel safe and secure, we are still worried about this storm. As I said before, every sailor roaming Mexico's waters has to make some tough decisions about when and where to go for the season. We went north, but some of our good friends went south with historical data on their side. These good friends are now sitting directly in the estimated path of Adrian and are pinned down until this storm goes away. We are sincerely hoping for the best and will be following developments as they come (and after this storm passes, we are still hoping they turn north and join us in the Sea of Cortez for the summer – hint, hint).

In other, less scary news, we've made our first round of purchases for our “giving back” program. To those of you who have chipped in a few bucks to help out with this little endeavor, a heartfelt thanks goes out to you. We couldn't do nearly as much as we would like without your help.

If you haven't heard about our little endeavor yet, click HERE to get caught up to speed.

One of my big plans with this little project was to purchase all of the things we would be giving out from little mom-and-pop type shops. By doing that, we would be supporting a local Mexican family's livelihood as well as supporting a family in need when we distribute these items. And because I was planning on buying all of this stuff from little shops all over town, it would mean we would be doing a lot of walking, a lot of carrying stuff with full and heavy backpacks, and a lot of trips in the dinghy to unload this stuff in our floating home. Well, the first round of purchasing didn't quite go like I had planned.

Since I've still got some broken toes and have been struggling with walking too far, we cheated on round one. We took a taxi to Walmart, loaded up a shopping cart with art supplies, school supplies, and soccer balls, and then took a taxi home. None of those things would have happened under normal circumstances. Especially the taxi ride to and from Walmart. If you know Brenda at all, then you'll know that she likes to walk - I take that back - she needs to walk. And it doesn't really matter how much stuff is jammed into a backpack – under normal circumstances, walking is happening. But this time around, the injury prevailed and a taxi was taken to Walmart of all places.

My guess is that by going to Walmart and purchasing a bunch of stuff, we probably saved a few bucks which means we can buy more stuff to distribute. But, I'm still not very happy about that. I would rather support the small local shop than the big box store, even if the dollars don't go as far. Oh well, round 2 of shopping will be a focused mom-and-pop shop effort, even if it means hobbling around the city for a few days.

But for now, we're pretty excited about what we've got so far. And we're even more exited to pass this stuff out as we make our way north into the Sea of Cortez. For those of you who would like to jump on the bandwagon, there is still time to chip in. The round 2 shopping spree will be taking place in the next few days, and yes it's true, anything helps. For real. Any and every little bit. Go here to chip in: http://svadventurer.blogspot.com/2017/04/a-big-idea.html