S/V Adventurer

After 8 months away, we've finally made it back to our floating home. Except at the moment, our sailboat isn't floating at all. She's been sitting on blocks in a dirty and dusty dry storage yard in Anacortes exactly where we left her 8 months ago. And those 8 months haven't been kind to the old girl. She looks pretty rough. She has a thick layer of grime covering her decks, the odd piles of seagull poop in random places, and even a few crab shells that those seagulls left behind with their poop. The inside of our boat isn't looking much better either. For the next few weeks, we'll be scrubbing, sanding, painting, wiring, and general maintaining, just trying to get her back into shape so we can head off onto the high seas. The list of chores is long, but really, all of those things don't matter if our new mast doesn't show up. So far, the word is our new mast is supposedly going to be in Anacortes sometime around the beginning of May-ish. We are cros...

We've been getting lots and lots of questions about our upcoming little sail to Mexico, so I thought that I could keep repeating myself, or I could just answer those questions right here and now and stop myself from sounding like a broken record.  So, for all of you non-sailors, sailing to Mexico is what we are going to talk about today.  And before we get into all of this, keep in mind that I have lived aboard a sailboat for almost 20 years, I've sailed thousands and thousands of miles, and been out of sight of land for days on end while bobbing up and down in the middle of the ocean.  With all of that, I may sound like I am an expert, but keep in mind that we've never sailed to Mexico, so really, I don't know Jack (who's Jack?). What I do know for sure though, is that sailing to Mexico from Seattle is a slow process.  It's not like hopping on a plane, taking a quick cat-nap, and then waking up in Cabo a few short hours later.  We will leave Seattle sometime ...

The West is big. It's actually huge. There is a ton of wide open spaces that are mostly run by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). A lot of the land that is managed by the BLM is used for cattle grazing, wildlife preserves, mining, and my personal favorite, it's open to us for recreation. Before we left on our big adventure, we hadn't really ever taken advantage of what the BLM had to offer. A lot of the land has not only wide open spaces and cattle that will roam through your campsite, but amazing natural wonders that are unlike any other place on earth. There are old ghost towns, oodles of wildlife, ancient Native American artifacts, fossils, and great hikes. To see most of this stuff, you have to be willing to put in some time and effort and really get way out there. During our 9 month road trip last year, our main focus was to see as many National Parks and natural wonders as we could muster. We quickly found that near most National Parks, the surroun...

I'm going to do my best to keep this one brief because we are frantically packing after a split second decision to hit the road this morning. Brenda returned home a few days ago after 4 months away, she had a couple of days to decompress, and then she decided that she needed some fun to solidify her decompression. Not only did she want fun though, she wanted some warm sun to go with it. Since her last 4 months have been spent in Seattle, putting up with the constant gray skies and rain that permanently go with that city during the winter, who could really blame her for wanting warm sun and an adventure to thaw her out? Not me. I'm a pretty easy sell when it comes to an adventure. Even though I've had some fun being a ski bum for the winter in Bend, I am ready for a change of scenery. More than anything, I am ready to not stare at the 4 walls of our home on wheels at night. Our RV has been getting smaller and smaller and smaller these last 4 months. We never in...

You may remember that roughly 5 months ago, we ordered a new mast for our sailboat. We sent a big fat check to some stranger in California (don't worry, it was sent to a reputable business...although it was still a big fat check to someone we've never met) and told him we were planning on sailing our boat down the coast this summer to Mexico. “No problem, we'll have it done before you need to leave” was the response I was given. I've had a slight tinge of trepidation for these past 5 months. Not because I didn't trust the business or the fact that it was a large sum of money we didn't plan on spending, but because without that mast, our sailboat wasn't going to take us to Mexico and beyond. Well, the good news is that a couple of days ago, I received a phone call that said our new mast is finally starting to be fabricated, and in another month, that 70 foot long pole will be shipped up I-5 on the back of a huge truck and be ready for us to install...

A couple of weeks ago I had said that I was going to try to do a better job of keeping up with this little blog. I just realized that a couple of weeks has gone by and I haven't done any sort of a better job. I also realized that I am heading out on a camping trip for about 10 days in the desert and I'll be pretty much off the grid while I'm out there, so if a better job is desired, I better get my butt in gear. When we are actively traveling and seeing new and exciting things, this blog is pretty easy to write. Inspiration is readily available during those times. When we aren't on the move and we are doing the same thing today as we did yesterday, this blog is a bit more challenging for me. Sure, I'm still having fun as a professional ski bum, but it seems pointless to tell you that I went skiing again today and had a great time, because that's exactly what I did yesterday, and yesterday I had a great time too. For some of you, being a ski bum m...

When I started this blog almost 2 years ago, I wanted to accomplish 2 things with it. First, I wanted some sort of record of our big adventure so that when I was old and senile, I had proof that we did something big. The second and more important reason, was to be able to share our thoughts, feelings, and experiences with family and friends (you). Since talking about feelings makes everyone uncomfortable, that is what we are going to talk about today. Last night, as I was sitting on the edge of a volcanic crater here in central Oregon, with my feet dangling down over the edge and waiting for the sunset (Mom, I was perfectly safe), I had a reoccurring feeling that I've had quite often in the last couple of years. I'm not sure there is an actual word for the feeling I had, but the best way I can describe it is that I just felt alive. Eating, sleeping, breathing, and pooping. Technically speaking, those things mean you are alive. But actually feeling alive is a who...