Slowing Down

I am writing this on April 17, 2020, 7 years after we made this decision.  But I’ve gone through my notes, logbooks, emails, and blog posts, and there’s nothing in there documenting our thought process and decision making, which is super surprising since it was such a big decision

When we left San Diego we actually thought we would zip down south all the way to Panama then jump to The Galapagos then cross The Pacific and be in New Zealand by November.  Keep in mind that we didn’t leave San Diego until THE END OF FEBRUARY.  In cruising, weather drives everything, and the South Pacific Cruising Season goes roughly from April to November in order to avoid Cyclone season.  In hindsight, we were crazy or more accurately we were simply ill-informed.  I remember when we were in Cabo San Lucas I had gone to the Port Captain’s office (I don’t remember why; I think I was trying to find out how we get permission to anchor in the bay) and there were people there clearing out to head to The Marquesas.  We struck up some small talk and I said we’d be right behind them, first we were going to Central America and then the Galapagos and then The Marquesas.  He said something like, “Wow, that’s a lot.”  I wasn’t phased at that point.

Then we got to La Paz area and our anchor dragged and we settled in a bit waiting for our new anchor to arrive.  We spent time at the islands near La Paz, and they were AMAZING.  I had a thought worm that was small at first and wouldn’t go away, “what’s the hurry?” it kept saying.

Well, the hurry was that there was that we couldn’t just stay in Mexico indefinitely because of hurricane season in the Northern Hemisphere.   We needed to get below the hurricane belt before May or so (which was also a stipulation in our boat insurance policy).

There aren’t hurricanes near the equator, so we researched just staying in Central America for the summer.  We had honeymooned on Costa Rica, so we had a fondness for that country in particular, so we started leaning that way.  Except.  Except it would still mean getting the heck out of Mexico pretty quickly and covering a lot of miles and missing out on The Sea of Cortez, and also we were reading that the summer near the equator brings other risks and challenges, like lightning.  Lots of lightning.

Then we learned that people actually stay in The Sea of Cortez for the summer.   Actually, lots of people do, because lots of people have different risk tolerances than we do when it comes to hurricanes.  But we learned a small group of cruisers every year spend the summer up north in The Sea of Cortez near Bahia de Los Angeles (aka BLA).  The village of BLA provides a home base with provisioning, and there is beautiful cruising nearby, AND there a hurricane hole called Puerto Don Juan.  A few years back a hurricane had gone all the way up there and several boats who had strayed further away from BLA had been destroyed, but the boats who had holed up at Puerto Don Juan were unscathed.  After talking to Derek and Trish from s/v Interabang (Derek is one half of the team that beat Tim and Alex in the Bocce Ball championship) we were sold.

We were staying in The Sea for the summer.  We just hoped there would be a kid boat or two who would join us.

(Forshadow… LADY CAROLINA!)

In hindsight, this was THE BEST DECISION.  We learned how to cruise where it was easy (relatively speaking).  We were able to make not one, but two trips North across the border to see friends and family and load up on provisions and supplies.  Not to mention, we made lifelong friends.  We would have missed so much had we rushed along and not to mention that we, quite frankly, would have been ill-prepared for South Pacific cruising.  It is harsher and less forgiving, and in The Sea we built a foundation of cruising skills that we needed to successfully cross The Pacific.