Batteries for Lobster

We are in Magdalena Bay with free wireless from the fishing camp.

From San Diego, we sailed 4 days to Isla Cedros. It began great and quickly turned awful. The gal who sold us the boat came to see us off with her dad. We really enjoy them both and were happy to connect again. A sunny morning with moderate winds soon turned into BIG ugly seas and wind and rain nearly the entire trip. I gave it my best the first day at the tiller, but I was seasick the entire trip and of very little help. Alex, bless his heart, was loving it. Although when the winds reached gale force on the second day, he did admit to being a bit frightened. Nonetheless, he was at the tiller and singing what I now think of as the Kristi Song.

We anchored next to a colony of elephant seals on Isla Cedros for two nights before sailing another few days to Turtle Bay, a quick stopover in Bahia Santa Maria, and then Magdalena Bay. These passages were much nicer, with plenty of wind to sail but without the awful gut wrenching swells. I'm really enjoying not having the motor running all of the time.

We traded 4 AA batteries for our lobster lunch yesterday (fishermen needed them for their GPS and we could have taken more, but even one hardly fit in our biggest pot) and this morning a whale surfaced not less than 30 feet from the boat while I was reading (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, very good so far).

It's dark as I'm writing this, and we just heard a huge splash next to the boat, no doubt a whale. This just gets better and better.

how we chose our boat

In response to a recent comment about boat specs...

Our boat is a Canadian built, 1981 J.J Taylor Contessa 26. We bought the boat in the Spring 2008 with this trip in mind. Our criteria for a sailboat revolved around three things: seaworthiness, accessibility and affordability.

Finding a seaworthy boat is easy, as there are lots a great boats available. Accessible was a bit more tricky. I've been paralyzed from the chest down since I was 20 as a result of a motorcycle accident, and have used a wheelchair ever since then. The thought of customizing a boat for my chair seemed financially out of reach, but more importantly, not having done this, I wasn't sure what I'd want and it seemed crazy to build a boat without first hand experience. So, we chose something simple and are essentially customizing as we go. It isn't perfect, but it works for us, and if we ever do have another boat, we'll have a lot more knowledge about what we want.

What we've done to make the Contessa work for me is make the space down below all one level. This allows me to simply crawl around and it gives us a bit more storage. In this regard, a small boat is nice because it is a shorter distance to crawl from A to B. A big concern was how Alex would do with this set-up, but it seems to be fine for him ever since he started doing yoga. The transition between below and above deck is less than half a foot, so it is just a matter of lifting myself in and out.

At this point, the boat is not set up for me to singlehand, but there is a lot I can do to share the work load. In the cockpit, I have a trapezoid shaped seat that spans the benches, providing a platform to sit on the high side while driving when the boat heels over. Additionally, just about all of the lines, including the roller furling run back to the cockpit. We've not made the modifications for me to raise the main or set or raise the anchor. But for now, we have a boat that is very manageable between the two of us.

While affordability is relative and taking a year or so to travel about for the simple pleasure of it is nothing short of extravagant, we kept the budget under control by living well within our means the past couple of years, finding a boat we could afford and doing 98% of the work to get her ready ourselves. It was also to our fortune that Alex's father recently ended his own 10+ years of cruising and generously donated a tremendous amount of gear. I scoured Craigslist and sale bins for used and discounted gear. Alex, with much appreciated help from our fathers, re-did the wiring, installed our SSB, VHF, watermaker and solar panels. We also re-did the plumbing so that when we are at sea we can flush into the ocean instead of the holding tank. The amazing thing, when I look back at it, is that the work, including a haul-out, bottom job, installing new thru-hulls and moving out of our apartment, happened within three months.


Also thought I'd share the artwork on the back of our SSB radio. These pieces were commissioned for $1 each by Tristan, a renowned SF artist. The bottom piece is our boat. The moose was a gift from my dad and is a tribute to the boat name's Fjordmus, which is Norwegian for Fjord mouse. But since it's pronounced fjord"moose", we thought the grog drinking elk was appropriate. How we got the name is the subject of a later post.

a cool map and a mystery

Wellness Week is about to come to an end. We've been doing laps in the pool everyday, and the watermaker and the SSB works, so we're ready to leave for MEXICO!! Today, we're scrambling about doing laundry, taking care of taxes, grocery shopping and sending the nice frying pan that I accidentally brought along back to my Mom.

Yesterday we also set up a new little mom-gizmo that will allow us to send an email to our families, letting them know that we are okay. It also locates us on a map, which is available for anyone to see. Every time we hit a little button, a new waypoint will be recorded along our route.

We'll leave tomorrow morning-ish, after one last swim, and possibly stop in Ensenada, which is about 65 miles from here. Most likely, we'll not stop and push on to Turtle Bay which is almost 300 miles away. This will be the longest non-stop passage I've made yet, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit to being a bit nervous. But, I'm more happy-excited than nervous. Up until now, it's been short hops from comfortable harbor to harbor. For the next 3-4 weeks we'll make longer passages and the few stops before reaching Cabo have very limited resources. But, we're expecting it to be beautiful and maybe even warmer. Our itinerary remains loose and we're shopping for a month, so that if we find an anchorage we like, we can stay and explore for a few days.

Finally, the mystery. We went to look at kayaks a few days ago and while poking around in one of the hatches, we found chocolate! They were yummy Lindt truffles. We decided it was a good omen and ended up buying the boat, but how the chocolate got there is still a mystery. Alex swears he didn't place them there, and since we ate the chocolate I didn't want to ask any of the sales people in case they were theirs.