S/V Adventurer

Before I get too far into this bit of rambling today, I want to clear the air. Yes it's true, we were just in our hometown of Seattle for a quick couple of days. I've already gotten enough emails, phone calls, and texts with an upset tinge to them, asking why we didn't visit, and I don't need anymore. So, just to make sure that we are on the same page here, it's not that we don't like you anymore, it's not that we don't care, and it's not that we didn't want to see you – it's because we just didn't have enough time to squeeze everyone in. Again, we were only there for a couple of days. Sorry. Get over it. The other thing I want to mention is that even though we are in the great US of A, the land of the connected, we have actually had the same or even less phone and internet access as we had in Mexico during our road trip, so updates will probably be a little behind the times.  Again, sorry, and get over it. Why did we come

If you've been following along with our adventure for a while now, you probably remember that this adventure of ours hasn't been all about sailing and tacos. A large part of the past three years has had us hiking tall peaks, ski bumming, and visiting as many National Parks and natural wonders as we could muster. Yes, all of that stuff was intermixed with time on the high seas, but basically, this adventure has been about us enjoying ourselves in whichever way, and wherever we have seen fit. I know a lot of you don't understand why we would leave our boat behind in Mexico and take on some other form of adventure when we have a perfectly good pirate ship just waiting for us sail the seven seas. Sure, it's hot in Mexico during the summer – everybody gets that. But why on earth would we do something else? Why not just stick it out, toughen up, and grin and bare it? The simple answer is because we don't have to. If Mexico's summer heat was making us cr

I've gotten quite a few emails, messages, and phone calls in the past week about the fact that we aren't currently in Mexico. Some of these messages have been sent with fear and shock and “what's going on? Is everything all right? What's happened?” Since I've been bombarded with people worrying about us, I'm hoping to set the record straight right now and answer some of those question. First of all, yes it's true, our little floating home is currently not floating. It's sitting in a storage yard in Mexico and we are back in the good ol' US of A for a bit. Before you get your panties in a bunch and start freaking out about how we've given up on sailing the world, let me say a few things first. After I'm done explaining myself, feel free to start freaking out and bunching up your panties all you want. If you know us well, you will know that we are unable to plan our way our of a paper bag anymore. Plans just don't stick w

There comes a time in every sailor's life when some hard decisions have to be made. We are at that point. We are currently in a little town on the Baja called Santa Rosalia. It's amazingly different than any other place we've seen so far in Mexico, and after 9 months in the country, we've seen a lot of places. Santa Rosalia is a mining town. Copper was discovered here in the 1860's, and after a few change of hands and some tax breaks and incentives, a French company took over the mines and the town took off. They imported wood from Oregon and Canada, and with that wood, they did something that we haven't seen anywhere else in Mexico. They built stuff...using wood. Nearly everything in Mexico is built from concrete, steel, and cinder blocks, so, without having to use too much brainpower, it's pretty easy to see that this place is different. No hard math or powers of deduction are needed - it's staring us right in the face in the f

If you don't know by now, I'm from a little town called Seattle. You may have heard of the place - it's nice. But coming from Seattle, where 11 ½ months of the year has the city covered in a cool, thick layer of clouds, and the sunshine we receive is in liquid form (rain), I've never had to become accustomed to heat of any kind. Sure, the 2 weeks of summer we get are heavenly and worth the wait, but when the temperature reaches a whopping 60 degrees, everyone starts running around in shorts and flip-flops and turning their skin that has been covered for the past 11 ½ months a blistering shade of red. And a Seattle heat wave? That's about 75 degrees. It's also when everyone who was begging for summer for the last 11 ½ months starts complaining about the heat and wishing they would have sprung for an air conditioner. Before we came to Mexico, we had heard from other friends and sailors who had spent the summer in the Sea of Cortez, riding out hurrica

Mexico is a funny place. Not like ha-ha kind of funny, but peculiar. And not peculiar in a bad way either. It's funny because it's really not what I expected when I dreamed of sailing here for the past 20 years. When I first started scheming and planning for this big adventure, I was pretty excited to get to Mexico. Mostly because of an article in a sailing magazine I had read that described a couple of islands and anchorages in the Sea of Cortez that sounded amazing. And the pictures that went with the article? Well, I had visions of me and my boat sitting in the middle of those pictures for nearly 20 years. When work and life and stress all seemed to be doing their best to drag me down, the vision of me in the middle of those pictures with my boat was the motivation that picked me up and kept me going. Those anchorages were the carrot at the end of the stick. But beyond those two anchorages, I really hadn't thought much about Mexico. I knew I wanted to g