Keeping in Touch

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 crossing our fingers, because without the new mast, our little sailboat isn't sailing anywhere.

Since we are eternal optimists, we are going to assume that everything will work out and we'll be bobbing around in the middle of the ocean in no time. And since we are assuming that our mast will actually show up and this upcoming little sail to Mexico is going to happen, we should discuss how we are going to be keeping in touch while we are off the grid.

You can probably imagine that cell phones and wifi signals don't work in the middle of the ocean. You can also probably guess that large portions of the Baja Peninsula and Sea of Cortez don't have much in the way of internet and phone coverage either. And when we leave Mexico and sail to even more distant shores, I'm sure you won't be surprised that it can be rather difficult to find internet access on a deserted tropical island in the middle of the mighty Pacific Ocean.

To deal with the impending lack of coverage, we have purchased a satellite communication system that will allow us to keep in touch while we are off the grid so to speak. If you are old like me, you remember the days of dial up internet service and how slow that was. Well, unfortunately, our new satellite system is even slower than the good ol' days of dial up. It's sad but true, but it's better than nothing.

With this system, we'll be able to get the all important weather updates, send and receive texts from anywhere in the world (Brenda is thrilled about this...she loves to text her girly friends), it will send out a gps signal so you can see exactly where our boat is (we'll include a link on this page when it's up and running), and it has a button that will magically allow us to post updates directly to Facebook (again from anywhere in the world...even in the middle of the ocean when we are thousands of miles from anywhere...amazing).

Since this little device will allow us to post directly to Facebook, we have started a Facebook page specifically for our adventure. If you would like to follow along using Facebook, the link is:

www.facebook.com/svadventurer

“Like” the page and you will magically and mysteriously be in the know...it's what all the cool kids are doing these days.

Also, we now have a Youtube channel that we are going to be posting videos about our adventure on. That link is:

www.youtube.com/c/svadventurerblogspot

Hit the “subscribe” button and you'll definitely be “in” with the cool kids.

We now have an Instagram account too. You can find us on Instagram at “svadventurer”. That one is pretty easy, and yes, the cool kids follow that one too.

All of those pages are new so not much is happening with them yet, but in the next few weeks, you should start seeing incredibly exciting things popping up. I'm serious, it's going to be really exciting stuff. It will be so exciting that even the cool kids won't know how to handle it.

And once our satellite system is up and running, we'll include a link on the blog that will pull up a map and show you exactly where in the world our little sailboat is. We want to share this tid-bit of information with you because first of all, it's pretty cool, but more importantly, we are hoping that if you see that we are in an amazing place, you may just want to hop on a plane and come visit us (we have a spare bedroom for our family and friends...and we hope you use it).

Last but not least, if you are not aware, there is a link on this blog that will allow you to get email updates when a new posting is made. There is a little tiny tab on the upper right side of this page that will allow you to put in your email address and receive those updates. It's science and it works (actually it doesn't seem to work with a mobile device, so if you want to sign up for email notification, you have to do it from an actual computer...sorry, but it's still science and I really don't know how it works).

Now that the keeping in touch part of things is out of the way, it's time for us to get back to work. We have some seagull poop that needs to be scrubbed off of the deck.

This was our last day of skiing for who knows how long...possibly for years.  As far as I know, there are no ski hills in the tropics.  Good bye Bend, good bye snow, and good bye slippery slopes.  You'll be missed.

This is Brenda climbing up the ladder to get into the boat.  You probably can't tell by the photo, but she is super excited to be working on the boat.  Really, really, really excited.