GB is so creative. He’s always coming up with new sewing projects for me. We bought a small 4Kg propane tank in Mazatlan last winter to enhance our total propane-carrying capacity as well as to use specifically with the Force 10 BBQ GB mounted on our starboard stern pulpit. We had been connecting the BBQ…
By popular demand* and because I happened to have been studying the issue right before we headed out of the marina, here's a discussion about a couple of different ways to handle mail while cruising long term. * Yo! Patrick! First, an explanation of mail forwarding and a description of our particular mail-forwarding strategy as it…
The Mexican FM-III visa is a type of resident (long-term) visa that is one step up the food chain from the basic 180-day tourist visa everyone gets when crossing the border for the first time. Many boaters cruise Mexico for years on a succession of tourist visas, and it works fine for them. Other boaters…
So, rumor has it, if we can cruise 24/7 for more than one full year, we'll be among those people who end up cruising for a really long time. I don't know about that…there's a lot to be said for a land-based existence…but we started short-time cruising in the PacNW and BC in 1998; then…
Weather permitting, by the time you read this we'll have slipped the mooring lines after 5 weeks at Marina Costa Baja in La Paz, to head north to the islands in the Sea of Cortez. If all goes according to plan (yeah, right), we'll be out there for at least 4 weeks before our next port-with-Internet…
As some dear readers may recall, our cruising expenses for November 2008 looked pretty sweet, thanks to having anchored out the whole month. For some contrast, here's what the following month looked like when we spent the first half of December 2008 anchored out in the islands of the lower Sea of Cortez, then put in…
A remote post – does this even work? We try to avoid these since it sucks up Skymate bandwidth – but with no reliable email for the next six months we will use it a bit more often – here’s hoping.
It was 0200 on a dark and clear night in the Sea of Cortez – also known as the Gulf of California. We were motoring along at 1600 rpm in a 1985 40 foot O’Day sailboat making about 3 knots, the oil pressure was wavering between 7 and 15 pounds, (the engine was rated for…
Act I, Scene I. Somewhere in the Sea of Cortez. Morning on The Fox at anchor. Belowdecks, in the salon. "Darling, there appears to be a spot of water in the Dry Bilge." "Taste it, My Sweet – is it fresh, or salty?" "It tastes of salt, Love. Whence comes it, thinks you?" "I shall…
So, there we were, another happy hour in the cockpit of The Fox. Jake and Vicky, recently having sailed their Malö 41 Maloose in to La Paz from Los Angeles, were with us. We had a grand time munching on scallop ceviche, crackers, totopos (tortilla chips) and salsa verde. Also, wine was involved. Red wine. We had no big…