The Half Way Point?!

12-5-12 - Chacala, Nayarit, MX

One of many beautiful sunsets

Letting our Halloween pumpkin go as we enter
Cabo San Lucas.  One milestone accomplished.

So we are six months in to this adventure.  Apparently this is the half way point in our year off.   Or maybe it’s the start of many years of cruising.  We left the real world and that nasty “W” word on June1.  Six months later what has happened?  Elizabeth would say we got married and went sailing.  I would say we went cruising, and got married before we left.  Either way a lot has changed or happened since June 1 this year.  First of all we have made a combined income of $0 since June 1.  That itself is enough to make you ask, “what the heck are you thinking?”  We say the same thing every month when we need to pay the two bills we have.  Did I mention life is a lot simpler and cheaper when you don’t own a house or a car?  Watching money flow out of your bank account every month and seeing none flow in may be the most stressful part of this adventure.  I keep thinking it was a good thing we never got satellite TV, that’s a hundred bucks we saved to spend now on important things like 10 feet of anchor chain, or really almost nothing on a boat costs less than a hundred dollars, but you can get about 100 Pacificos at the beach palapa for that.  So we may have missed out on a few episodes of the Kim Kardashien show but I think the trade was worth it. 

 

Not a bad setting for $1 beers

Somehow in the last year I convinced Elizabeth to marry me, sell most of our stuff, and live on a 34 foot floating RV, in Mexico.  If I can make that happen I should have been a lawyer.  I could get anyone off.  The truth is, living in a 34 foot space that must function as your house and transportation is refreshingly simple way to live.  As long as by simple you mean worrying that every time you use the bathroom it may or may not work, or if you use the stove you must remove the cutting board, or if you use the shower you must empty the towels out of the room and remember to pump out the water at the same rate as you pump it in to wash yourself or it will overflow into the kitchen/living room.  Look behind the sofa and you can find some flares and a tether to save your life or a bottle of wine (with a sock around it so it doesn’t clank into the other bottles) or maybe some paper towels, you just need to know where to look.  Open up the locker in the cockpit, but don’t pull the string attached to the life raft while trying to get the generator out to make power to turn the lights on, cause that would be a big problem.  Make sure you close that hole in the boat and open that other one when you turn the engine on, or either there will be water in the bathroom or you’ll burn up the engine.  So simple may not be the right word for it, neither would uncomplicated.  But you do begin to understand what you need and what you don’t need.  What makes life better and what is extra.  At some point its just like everyone else.  You need to remember to open the garage door before you back out each morning, same idea.

Under way to Isla Isabela.  Everythings good.

Six months later we are still trying to refine our processes and talk about what needs done on the boat.  Apparently, this will never end, just like you are never “done” cutting the grass or raking leaves.  There’s always next year or next week and the must dos will be waiting for you.  We have started to overlook the little dings in the boat that used to be worrisome.  At some point if you are going to live on it, you will bang the anchor into the bow, rub on a dock or two or the pantry shelves will all spill out into the salon when you open the door under way in rough weather.  Oops!

 

Six month later we still don’t know where we’ll be next week.  I guess that’s why we are doing this.  Don’t plan too far ahead because the weather may conspire against you, so just sneak up on it and leave before it can blow too hard!  We have become much better at planning the next jump but enjoying the place we are right now.  Probably a good thing to take with us in the future. 



Where to Next?

Elizabeth looks pretty happy. 

Six months later, actually only 5 as it was just our 5 month-aversary, we are still married!  Everyone should be forced to spend five months with their new spouse in a 34 foot space.  Fewer people would probably get married.  But we have done great, considering that even the most minute of tasks seems to take some level of cooperation.  Think about going to work in the morning and having to wake up your wife to help you put the tires on the car before you can leave.  That’s sort of how our dinghy works; it takes two people to put it together and two people to take it apart each night.  That’s not to say that Elizabeth isn’t needy, wanting showers three times a week and free access to land (ie a marina) once every 10 days or so.  While the idea of life and death decisions may be melodramatic, your joint decisions seem to have a greater weight when you are floating around in a couple hundred feet of water (in Mexico) with only an inch of fiberglass with a dozen holes in it keeping you afloat.  So far so good.  I think this marriage thing will work out for us. 

So six months later everything seems to be going well.  A bigger boat with more solar power, a shower, endless water, a dinghy on davits, no need to go back to work ever, and weekly pedicures for Elizabeth would make it all better.  Or would it?  Or maybe just some satellite TV would complete my life.  At least I can count on 1 tray of ice per day (and only 1 tray per day if we’re lucky) to make an Anchor Down.  So I’ve got that going for me, 12 cubes of ice a day as I sit in the cockpit watching the sun go down over some palm trees, 85 degrees in early December ,wondering when the last time I wore shoes was…I guess that’s not so bad.

Where the Bells of San Blas used to hang