The First Rule of Cruising

1-8-13 – Punta de Mita, Banderas Bay, MX

We officially broke the first rule of cruising this week.  There really aren’t that many rules to this game.  There are some pesky ones about lights at night.  (Why not run a masthead tricolor with your running lights?  Heck turn on the steaming light while you’re at it.  The more lights the better right?) But besides these there really aren’t many rules.  People even seem to give you a break for poor radio etiquette.    Just don’t spend too much time chatting it up on 22, the cruisers hailing channel, or some self-appointed radio police do good cruiser will tell you to change because he is worried that someone else may have to wait five minutes to find out what time bocce ball starts today.   Nope, it’s really pretty simple.  You go where and when the weather lets you.  And this is the basis of the first rule of cruising.

Shrimp boat following us

Never commit to being in a specific place at a specific time.  You can commit to a location and when the weather lets you, you’ll get there.  You can commit to a time and where the weather lets you go is where you’ll be.  But to commit to a time and a place, inevitably leads one to move when the weather isn’t good.  Or at least it leads you to second guess yourself and the motivation behind your decisions.  “Are we leaving today because we want to and the weather is great? Or are we leaving because we know we need to be somewhere soon and don’t want to miss this weather window?”  The weather is one of the few things you simply can’t control.  They can half correctly, sometimes predict the weather three days in the future, but beyond that It’s just a guess.  Being a small sailboat we are a highly weather dependent operation.  The wind need to be enough to move us but not too much to hinder us.  Waves generated somewhere in Japan can slow us to a crawl, (literally a slow as you could crawl, no exaggeration) so we need to know about them.  Top that off with the fact that sailboats can’t go into the wind; the direction of the wind is important as well.  Sometimes it seems like a miracle that we get to move ever as all those factors line up to make it a travel day.  Add the factor that we are now heading North and the prevailing direction for most of these factors is against us and those weather windows seem to get smaller and longer in between.

Elizabeth sailing on a beautiful day

If someone asked you if you could go 145 miles in 17 days, I’m guessing you’d say yes.  That’s only 8.5 miles a day.  We figured it would be no problem either, and it actually turned out not to be.  But the thought that we needed to be in a place at a time dominated our thinking as we analyzed the weather for days at a time.  Wondering if it was a good time to head North or if we were moving because we had to get there.  Would we have waited if we didn't have commitments?  What if we don’t go now, how long will it be until the weather is good again?  When we found ourselves “stuck” in Tenicatita for seven unplanned days and a weather system heading our way; our plan to slowly hop up the coast and enjoy every little anchorage went out the window.  Now we were making a break for it and hoping we weren't making a foolish decision.

The tea cup on the coast

Sometimes you can't trust that chartplotter

Early morning departure

One of the many whales we saw

Needless to say we had a fine trip North and our decisions proved to be good ones.  Yesterday we were greeted back to Banderas Bay by whales everywhere and we narrowly missed running over a couple of turtles out in the middle of the ocean.  They don’t seem to look around very much to see us coming, but pop their heads up and glance at us as we slide past, sort of annoyed that we woke them up.  While it seems easy to scoff at the first rule of cruising, it has been repeated to us so many times I can’t count, and for the first time we actually understood it’s meaning and how important it is.

Cool clouds