Take to the sea

The (mis)adventures of two dreamers that do

Birth day

I turned 29 on Wednesday. I am officially entering the last year of my twenties. When Jeff asked me if there’s anything I needed to check off of my list to ensure that my twenties were sufficiently crazy and irresponsible, I couldn’t really come up with an answer. Truth be told, I’m pretty happy with my twenties thus far, though I can’t say that this decade of my life was the least bit crazy or irresponsible. Some would say that living on a boat in Mexico could qualify, but it’s all in the eye of the beholder I guess. Even the sucky parts of the last near decade were still pretty good. I’m grateful to be where I am, to have what I have, to know what and who I know – I have a lot of people in my life to thank for making life what it is today.

The four outfit fashion show

This post is largely for the benefit of my mother, who politely, routinely, and persistently has requested that Harmony and I post more photos of ourselves on this trip. Sit back, fellow traveler, and scroll with idle curiosity . . .

The thing about things

When we moved onto Serenity, we sold all of our things. I exaggerate. We sold most of our things. The things that are still in our possession, the things we can call our own fit on our 30 foot sailboat and 5 shelves in Jeff’s parents’ garage. Most of these things are either pretty integral to our day to day, or they’re memories we’re storing away to rediscover at a later date (5 shelves is a lot of memories).

I thought I would learn through this experience that things don’t matter so much. I’ve actually learned something different.

Maybe perfectionists weren’t meant to be bloggers

I’m a perfectionist by birth (don’t know where I got it from though, must be a recessive trait) and I’ve gotta say that sometimes this blogging business can get me all worked up. I can’t stand when blog posts are out of sequence, when they don’t hang together in perfect chronological and narrative order. There are always formatting errors and the pictures are different sizes and there are sometimes two spaces in between paragraphs rather than one! It’s the mental equivalent of nails on a chalkboard for me. I can’t resist the impulse to go back and edit old posts. But…everybody’s gotta get over their hangups at some point. Who knew that blogging would help me work through mine? Or maybe it will exacerbate it, I have yet to find out.

Fish stories

When our friend Jill was visiting us from Seattle in La Paz, she asked me a question that neither Harmony or I had thought to ask. This was among the many delights of having her come to visit. Others included sharing the city with her and sailing her out to a beautiful anchorage only to addict her to the card game that Harmony and I play on our i-Things during many of the empty moments. Sitting out in the cockpit with our third pot of coffee, Jill asked,

    “What about this experience so far has surprised you the most?”

I had to give it some thought. We had just been nearing our six-month mark since leaving Portland last August. There have been many things that surprised me in all these foreign environments, but in my gut I knew which one it was.

Getting off the dock

Docks are like drugs. You think I’m kidding. Once you have a dock you think you need it, every day for the rest of your life. Over time the dock starts to make you feel anxious, like you should be doing something every moment of the day, like you’re missing out on all the things that are just behind that gate, like you should be socializing with all the friendly folks that happen by.

The larger world

We’ve taken to the sea away from our home, the intangible place where your character has worn a groove in the social landscape, where the other characters in your life are large and singular, and your fit is generally snug. We’ve taken to the sea with an unspoken expectation that the world will spread flat, everywhere you turn promising forward motion, every face one of a thousand flowers in bloom, the groove skipped and a shallow waving needle track trailing in your wake. The larger world.

Jamaica or tamarindo margarita

Jeff and I discovered that both agua de jamaica and agua de tamarindo make excellent mixers for margaritas (even without ice). This is the drink of choice aboard Serenity these days because it’s delicious and its cheap (and maybe has health benefits??? At least that’s what I tell myself). We are currently finishing off a bottle of relatively decent 100% agave tequila that only cost us $60 pesos (less than $5 US dollars).* That is absurdly cheap. The agua de jamaica or agua de tamarindo costs anywhere from $1 – $4 for ½ a gallon. We’re talking < $0.40 per margarita here. We can get tipsy in style (debatable) for mere dollars! You can drink in style too…

We got this

The broken engine saga continues. We were approximately 10 miles from La Paz, with four miles of that total distance comprised of a narrow channel into La Paz. When we left Playa Pichilingue at 8am the current was in our favor, but only for another 1.5 hours or so. We were hoping for wind at our back, but we got a south wind instead (naturally). In the morning the wind was cresting 18 knots so we opted for the working jib.