It’s been two months since our last boat log.  Mapache spent half of that time in Puerto Vallarta, most of which was due to a non-boating emergency.  Rob’s grandmother passed away, and Rob and I flew to Ohio to help his grandfather with all that comes with that.  Luckily, we were in a safe marina, blocks away from an international airport, so we made it to the midwestern United States with speed and ease.  All is well now, and we are back aboard Mapache, ready to untie the dock lines tomorrow to head further south.  

The next boat log describes our stops from Mazatlán through Puerto Vallarta, including some quality beach time with blue-footed boobies and visits with friends from the United States.  It is almost ready to publish, and I promise to have that up later this week.  For now, click on the Garmin tracker and follow us as we sail to Tenacatita Bay, before heading on to Barra de Navidad.

On December 23, we left the Baja coast and the Sea of Cortés for the final time.  We crossed 238 miles of ocean to the Pacific coast of mainland Mexico.  The trip took almost 38 hours, and we arrived just before midnight on December 24 in Mazatlán.  Our friends, wearing Christmas hats, welcomed us by catching our dock lines and handing us beers. 

Ocean Crossing at Night

For overnight passages, we keep a watch schedule, allowing us to take turns sleeping.  Rob prefers the evening and early-morning shifts, while I prefer the middle of the night.  The ocean is different at night.  It is both quieter and louder.  It is lonelier but also more familiar.  And, while usually peaceful, it always seems on the edge of releasing something terrifying.

This most recent night watch (December 23-24) was comfortable and sparkly.  The water formed gently rolling hills, and the breeze pushed us (with the help of the motor) at 7 knots per hour (a brisk pace for our boat). After Rob retired to the settee (couch) inside of the boat at 1 a.m., I listened to a book from the captain’s chair, keeping an eye on our radar screen for unexpected boats crossing our path, and occasionally standing up for a direct look around.  Those looks were futile, because the moon had set, making it nearly impossible to tell where the dark sky stopped and the black ocean began, let alone whether any pangas, longlines, or stray crab-traps lay in wait to interrupt our trip.  But that same darkness allowed more stars to shine.  The sky was filled with bright pinholes, and I watched several asteroids splash across the sky, while bright blue-white bioluminescence spiraled across the water as the boat stayed her course. 

Sounds are much louder at night and the thud of the water hitting the hull was distinct, like a bass drum in a marching band.  My tether’s carabiner clanked against its attachment when I shifted my weight.  And a pitch change in the motor’s drone caused an immediate Pavlovian reaction, as I recalled our engine struggles over the past year.  But the pitch change this trip was merely the alternator turning on to recharge the boat’s batteries.   

Night Visitors

I thought about our last overnight passage from the Baja coast to mainland Mexico (that time, to Puerto Peñasco).  On that trip, I started my first night watch at sunset.  During that first shift, our radar screen showed a large blob eight miles ahead of us.  The strange thing was the blob’s size—it was 30 times the size of our friends’ 38-foot boat, which the radar screen reassuringly showed three miles to our port (left).  No land masses existed in front of us for 60 miles.  I assumed the radar was faulty, possibly seeing a reflection from the water in the humid air, or a group of boats fishing close together.  Still, I redirected our course to avoid the blob.  Rob took over at the helm at 10 p.m.  His shift brought us past the mystery location.  The redirected course allowed our boat to pass half of a mile from the blob.  As the boat passed, a massive glow of bioluminescence quickly rose from the depths underneath the boat.  Rob braced for a collision with a whale, but nothing happened.  Then he saw 10 other large glowing lights under the water.  They all disappeared along with the blob on the radar screen.  The image that had maintained at a location for two hours completely disappeared from the screen as if it had never existed.

I took over for my second shift at 1 a.m.  Rob described the glowing encounters before retiring to bed.  I kept a pensive watch, half hoping I would see the large glows and maybe that they were giant Humboldt squid (which live in the area), and half hoping I would not.  Then, streaks of bioluminescence shot through the water, like underwater missiles around us.  Dolphins!  I recognized the sound of their splash as they leapt around the boat.  I whistled at them, and they responded with more leaps.  On the lonely nightshifts, the sight and sound of dolphins are a welcome comfort.  It feels as if they are looking out for us in the darkness, reassuring that we are going the right way and that no obstructions are in our path.  The dolphins disappeared, leaving a trail of green glow behind.  The air was heavy and sticky, it smelled warm almost like a campfire without the smoke.  Just as with the most recent passage’s night watch, Mapache and I floated along through space, with the stars above and bioluminescence below blending into one sparkling blackness.  

New Day, New Year

I always know that my night shift is nearing its end when I see the sky on the horizon softening.  It starts an hour before dawn, and it looks like an eraser is smoothing and lightening the ocean, spreading from a single point on the horizon to circle the entire thing, and leaving stars and the dark sky in only the center, directly above me.  The approaching sunrise burns orange into the horizon and the water changes from black to a silvery blue, like the body of a Bonita fish, which thrive in this Sea of Cortés.  I hum the song that, as a kid, my dad would wake me with—”Here Comes the Sun.”  Then, Rob walks up the companionway to take over, and I take a morning nap.

Now, after a week at a marina that is joined to a resort, where we have all the pool, buffet, and spa amenities, it seems appropriate that it is a new year.  We have had a relaxing (and luxurious) reset here.  And this is the starting point for the next portion of our adventure—exploring the Pacific coast of Central America, as we track toward the Panama Canal.  The trees, weather, animals, and food are already markedly different from our Baja experience.  It’s tropical here.  There are palm trees instead of cacti; humidity instead of the blow-dryer heat; slow green iguanas and soaring frigate birds instead of small sand-surfing lizards and stalking buzzards.  The streets and plazas are lined with colorful colonial buildings and filled with vendors and people in search of those vendors’ wares and food.  There is an energized pace here, as compared to the laid-back Baja vibes we enjoyed last year.  

We loved Baja, but we are ready to experience this new part of the world, and we will do our best to bring you along in the boat log.  Salud to 2022! 

… for a little reminder that Mapache shirts and hats are available HERE. And to convince you that purchasing one is a great idea, see the above photo of adorable kids sporting our shirt!

Thanks to all of our friends, who were fine with their kids being child models.

It is also the season for the Mapache crew to say what we think all year long:

Thank you for following and supporting us. We wish you the best for the approaching New Year! Cheers.

Rob has been training at Seven Ronin Jiu Jitsu, a small gym in Puerto Peñasco, and the people there have become good friends. They have been generous with their time for and support of Rob and I, and they have been a real refuge for Rob when he needs a break from the boat work. Seven Ronin does an excellent job of teaching Jiu Jitsu, but their facility is at risk of losing its mats and the building needs repairs. We have set up a fundraiser to help keep the gym going. If you have a few dollars to spare, please help out.

Muchas Gracias!

Click Here: FUNDRAISER FOR SEVEN RONIN JIU JITSU

Having the boat out of the water has felt like a reset.  This is our second time in a boatyard with a mountain of upgrades, changes, and fixes to complete.  The boat sits unnaturally out of the water with her insides askew, and we live in a temporary space off of the boat.  The first time was the start of this trip.  We spent three months in the boatyard in Ilwaco, Washington, before heading out of the Columbia River’s mouth into the Pacific.  

In Ilwaco, we spent days in a giant metal barn with Mapache, a handful of sparrows, and an extended family of pigeons.  Every day brought a new scavenger hunt because, despite our efforts, nothing remained organized.  Somehow the DeWalt cordless drill was always missing when you needed it.  And to this day, I do not know how the large screwdriver ended up underneath the dinghy in the far corner of the barn for a month.  Each morning, we pumped ourselves up with coffee and music.  We worked nonstop until our end-of-day routine of shuffling down the road to the marina showers to watch paint, fiberglass, and sweat wash down the drain.  At night, we slept in a tent below our boat.  The air was usually chilly.  And the blues and greens of the Pacific Northwest’s forested landscape was just outside of the yard.  Apart from our bird roommates, we saw squirrels, raccoons, and black bears, and we gained comrades in the others working on boats.

Our second boatyard experience is similar with the daily plugging-through of the to-do list that ends in the boat’s dust circling a shower drain.  I spent time at the top of the mast and behind our sewing machine, while Rob spent time underneath the boat and squashed into the engine compartment.  A noticeable percentage of our days was spent searching for a necessary tool amongst the disarray.  But this time, we breathe the hot desert air of northern Sonora, Mexico, surrounded by its landscape that is painted from browns and oranges and filled in with tiendas.  Lizards and street-dogs comprise our animal guestlist.  Again, we have built a solid community of people, who are also working on their boats.  That community helps each other with projects that need another set of hands or brains, as well as with spare parts.  Instead of a cup of sugar, neighbors ask for a stainless steel bolt or a size-10 zipper slider.  The community also provides company for a few warm Tecates under the shade of our neighbor’s catamaran.  Instead of a tent under the boat, we have an apartment a few blocks away, which is now filled with boat stores and sewing projects, leaving us to wonder how it all fits back inside of Mapache.

Our time here is almost over.  Hurricane season has officially ended in this part of the world, and most of our to-do list is complete.  We have plenty left undone, because boat projects are never over and there is always something that does not work quite right.  We are set to go back in the water on November 15 20 23, pending whether that is the “mañana” that the boatyard (and Mapache) intends.  Over the last week, engine parts revised the “mañana” of our splash date. Rob rebuilt our engine while in the yard. Part of the rebuild included a purchase of a refurbished long block. When we went to test the engine this week, it had no oil pressure. After some investigation, Rob determined an oil-pump gear was missing–a gear that is not available for purchase due to the age of that style engine. Meanwhile, a local recycler had collected our old engine to take to a metal recycler in Mexicali. Rob hustled on his bike to the man’s storage yard and luckily discovered that our old engine had missed the most recent truck to Mexicali. Rob was able to pull out the necessary piece. But when he went to install it, he found that another component of the oil pump was incorrect (it was a component made for a car and not a boat). After much internet searching, Rob sourced the correct piece from Ebay and overnighted it to the gas station in the closest U.S. border town, which accepts packages for a $12 fee. Today, Rob is catching a ride from two of our boatyard neighbors (muchas gracias) to collect the piece. And with any luck, our mañana for Mapache’s splash date will not change again.

Our planned route from here is to cross back over to the Baja side of the Sea of Cortés, sailing south to La Paz, where we will pick up our new-to-us, smaller dinghy (which will give us more room on deck, where we store her).  Then, we plan to cross back to mainland Mexico, hitting Mazatlán to continue our trek south.  Over the next year, we will follow the Pacific coastline of Central America toward the Panama Canal.  

When we left Ilwaco, we had planned to go west around the world, crossing the Pacific from Mexico.  But the COVID pandemic has heavily impacted many of the small South Pacific islands, limiting their accessibility to visitors.  Of course, COVID has impacted everywhere, but much of the Caribbean and Europe is opening sooner and safer.  So, as with most boat plans, we are changing it up, heading east around the world.  And a bonus to the new plan is that we have gained a buddy boat, who has a similar eastward route and schedule.  Cruising in the Sea of Cortés gave us a lot.  Along with beautiful and abundant water and the stark and mystical land, the Sea brought us a community of like-minded adventurers on boats.  And four of those adventurers intend to cruise with us for the next couple of years, hopefully including an Atlantic crossing.  Of course, this will likely change again . . . it is a boat plan. 

We are proud to announce that we have Mapache merchandise! Check out the Mapache hats and the amazing custom T-shirt design that our friend, Tyler Jeffers, did, by clicking here or on the “Mapache Merch!” page under the menu above.

We hope you like the new gear as much as our nephew does. Stay well!

We spent the Sea of Cortés’s hurricane season in Arizona (with quick trips to the midwest and Oregon), while Mapache took a break, out of the water, in Puerto Peñasco’s boatyard.  While in the U.S., we were fortunate to spend the summer with our family and friends.  We house- and pet-sat, we crashed in people’s spare-rooms, we camped, we dined at old haunts, we created new favorite spots, and Rob had a well-timed, emergency appendectomy.  The summer flew, and we did not get to hang out as much as we wanted with all of the people we had hoped. But there will be next times, whether those be in Arizona or some other corner of the earth.  We cannot thank enough all of the people, including my parents, who graciously opened their homes, laundry rooms, and vehicles to us while we visited. THANKS A MILLION!

We are now reunited with Mapache in Puerto Peñasco, and we are wasting no time.  We are ready, and set, to go…back to the grindstone.  Our goal is to get Mapache back in the water and sailing south along the Pacific Coast of Central America by November.  Rob is tearing the boat apart to complete upkeep and updates.  The biggest project is the rebuild of our loving engine.  Although the engine helped make many memories, we are ready for less (*knock on wood*) time spent on engine adventures (aka “repairs”).  Stage one of that is already complete, with Rob having rigged a system and hauled the engine completely out of the boat, alone (see the video below).  To allow for space to accomplish the boat projects and to have some reprieve from the heat and humidity, we rented a small apartment in town.  That is where I spend my days—on  the computer for some paid work, and behind the sewing machine for some boat work. 

Keep an eye out for more updates soon.  We hope you are all well.  Thanks for sticking with us in all of Mapache’s adventures. 

Passage: Sea of Cortez (Mar de Cortés), La Paz to Puerto Peñasco

Mapache left La Paz, at the southern end of Baja California, in mid-April and spent six weeks meandering her way north, along the east coast of the Baja peninsula, through the Mar de Cortés, to Puerto Peñasco.  Mapache will stay in Puerto Peñasco through the summer, while her crew visits friends and family in Phoenix and wait out the area’s hurricane season.  

There is a line in the song, “Human,” by the rock band, The Killers, that is a reference to a comment by Hunter S. Thompson.  The lyrics are: “Are we human, or are we dancer.”  It received a lot of attention from fans and media as grammatically incorrect and because those, who did not know its origin, read its meaning different from that intended.  Thompson’s comment was a criticism of society that people were acting as dancers, afraid to fall out of line, rather than being human.  The lyric often pops into my head when I explain our choice to set sail on Mapache.  

When people learn about our journey, many assume that we are skilled and experienced sailors.  That is incorrect, and when people voice that assumption, we often respond that we are adventurers, not sailors.  Certainly, we spent our spare time of two summers sailing a smaller sailboat around the Columbia River; Rob and I took a couple of weekend sailing classes; and we attended many lectures on sailing, weather, boat systems, safety, rigging, and sailboat maintenance and repair.  We also spent hundreds of hours reading books on all subjects related to cruising (sailing for extended periods of time and distance).  But when it comes down to it, we do not come close to having the time on the water that is required for one to hold themselves out as a “sailor.”  

Rather, we have logged time on the tops of mountains, in endurance sports, on a motorcycle in untracked rural Mexico, lost in foreign countries, and overcoming challenges in our jobs.  We are MacGyvers, not just in repairing and rigging physical things, but of problem-solving life.  We seek the unbeaten path, because we know that the new experiences it holds make its difficulty worth it.  In short, we are adventurers.  And that is why we feel confident that we possess the skills necessary to take on sailing around the world without being “sailors.”  

We recognize that that confidence involves some naivete.  But a little naivete might be a good thing.  It removes the prejudgment that could have kept us from attempting something like this.  It causes us to do things the wrong way.  And the wrong way is an efficient and effective teacher.  For example, seasickness helped me understand why a sail up, even without wind, is important on a sailboat.  A few wild rides on the ocean helped us learn why reading a weather report for the wind gusts and highest wave-heights, as opposed to wind and wave averages, is wise.  

Further, not knowing the “correct” sailorly ways has helped us come up with simpler methods for boating tasks.  After exploring several islands and bays outside of La Paz in the Mar de Cortés, we entered Puerto Escondido, a natural hurricane hole (protected on all sides) near Loreto, Baja California Sur.  There, a boater’s choice to stay is either docked at the posh marina or attached to a mooring ball in the harbor.  We opted for the less pricey option—mooring ball.  We had never picked up a mooring ball and, failing to recollect the brief explanations we previously encountered, we decided that the best way was to treat it like a person-overboard.  When picking up a person-overboard, one brings the boat alongside the bobbing victim, allowing easy access at the deck’s lowest point and gate.  It also allows the most room for error, because one may grab the balance-challenged’s life vest or hand at any point of the length of the boat’s side.  We applied the person-overboard technique and easily attached our designated mooring line (rope) to our intended mooring ball.  Later, I reviewed some sailing books to find that the “correct” way to hook a mooring ball is to stand precariously on the front of the boat, lean over the railing with a boat hook (long pole) to snag the ball’s line, and rush to attach the boat’s line before the boat moves too far away.  While in Puerto Escondido, we watched many sailors struggle with attaching to a mooring ball, often requiring several attempts.  We smugly agreed to stick to our amateur method.

From Puerto Escondido, we cruised to several more islands and bays in the Mar de Cortés.  The east coast of the Baja California peninsula is spectacular with powerful mountains colored with purples, oranges, and pinks.  The landscape is dotted with cacti and other scrappy desert plants, showing an occasional bright flower.  And the white sand beaches contrast brilliantly with the turquoise shallows, which blend into deep blue water under Mapache’s hull.  The small islands are crumbs from the mainland, broken off and scattered around the Sea as samples of Baja’s geology and wildlife.  The only residents of most of the islands and bays at which we anchored were coyotes, goats, lizards, seagulls, and pelicans, with the occasional fishing camp or small grouping of simple houses.  But the water was filled with life—coral, crabs, starfish, urchins, and octopus; all sizes and colors of fish; leaping dolphins and rays; shy turtles and sealions (“lobos marinos” in Spanish, which means sea wolf); grebes, frigatebirds, and, even, the rare blue-footed boobies.  Anchored at these lonely but vibrant spots was like living in a beautiful novel with poetic words of the desert’s wilds and the sea’s riches.  We felt far removed from people’s pollution, like the 9-to-5 hustle, politics, rush hour, and hurried schedules.  The simplicity of being on a boat anchored in those places meant that our minds were not littered with worry, allowing us to freely enjoy the world around us.   

Our days were spent hiking up goat trails, snorkeling through reefs, and snacking on beaches.  We found a hidden lagoon on Isla Coronados, inhabited by four giant black rays.   I negotiated with a seagull to return my flipflop on a quiet beach.  We analyzed pelicans’ strategies as they broke from their perfect flight formations to dive-bomb the water for fish.  I learned to accept jellyfish stings as part of my daily swim.  We explored mangroves by dinghy.  We followed a dirt road from one beach to a lone streetlamp in the middle of nowhere, that was somewhere to the man who sold us vegetables straight out of his garden beds across from that lamp.  We were puzzled by something constantly knocking on our boat’s bottom, until we saw large fish eating the marine growth off of our hull.  We ate jicama every day, because it was the only consistently available vegetable in the small stores (usually run out of people’s living rooms) in the places we stopped.  We watched a lunar eclipse from our boat in an uninhabited bay.  The bioluminescence erupted around us with jumping fish as the moon darkened, and a lobo marino howl echoed against the mountains as if the land wolves were howling back.  As the moon began to peek back out of the earth’s shadow, the morning sun started its appearance.  We watched the sharp black and white lines of the lunar eclipse while smooth pastels of the sunrise washed across the sky and water behind us.  The sky was awake.  

Our clock was the sun and our only decision was when and which anchorage to head next.  Every few days, we would cross our fingers for sufficient wind, weigh anchor, and head out.  We always sailed, but the gentle breezes usually required us to incorporate the motor’s assistance.  Our time in the Mar de Cortés is likely what many of you imaged we were doing our whole trip.  Of course, our ever-needy motor gave us a project, requiring Rob to completely disassemble and reassemble the transmission in our cockpit.  The repair to a loose gear-assembly worked, and we recalled the mantra: “Cruising is just working on your boat in exotic places.”  

In these spaces, we met people on other boats with similar goals to us.  And through those common interests as well as cockpit happy hours, a handful of those people are now good friends, planning to share the ocean road with us again.  Many are in their 30s and 40s.  They have worked careers, saving money to attain things like a house and vehicles.  But when the time came, they traded in the dream of owning a permanent land home for a dream of more movement, exchanging the picket fence for an open horizon.  Neither is right nor wrong.  The boat life is merely what is right for these vagabonds.  

Over the course of six weeks, we made our way from La Paz, up the Mar de Cortés, along the Baja peninsula, to Ensenada Alcatraz, which offers a protected anchorage.  Alcatraz was our last stop before crossing the Sea from the Baja peninsula side to the Mexican mainland, ending at Puerto Peñasco for the summer.  The crossing was a 24-hour trip.  We had planned to stop over for one night at Alcatraz before making that leap, but that changed to two nights when the forecast showed a weather system pushing gale-force winds along our intended path around the tip of the nearby Isla Ángel de la Guarda.  Two days later, we headed out with the rising sun and a favorable forecast, but quickly encountered big seas and powerful winds that forced us to retreat to the perhaps aptly-named Alcatraz.  

When we are out of cellular signal, we receive the forecast on our computer through the single-sideband radio.  The service we use updates at noon every day.  At noon after our retreat, the forecast populated our computer screen, showing that we would be unable to make our escape until the following afternoon.  That time came, and our third try had charm.  We crossed in a calm sea, with sufficient sailing wind, and we watched the purples, oranges, and pinks of the Baja peninsula and its islands fade behind us. 

About 22 hours later, and nine months after leaving Portland, Oregon, we arrived in Puerto Peñasco.  It felt like coming home.  I joked about sailing our boat to Phoenix (where I grew up), and this is as close as we can get.  The last nine months have taught us that, although we understood basic sailing concepts, we did not really know how to sail.  But we have learned, and we feel ready to continue stepping out of line to follow a nontraditional path in a nontraditional way.  We are human.  

We are presently in the Sea of Cortez (Mar de Cortés), heading north to Puerto Peñasco, where we will haul the boat out of the water for the summer.  We will spend the summer visiting family and friends and maintaining the boat.  In the fall, we will set sail south down mainland Mexico and into other Central American countries.

Our feelings about the wind have been a continued flip-flop, hypocrisy, battle of desires, irony, however you want to call us out.  We complain tirelessly about our lack of wind when we are at sea and forced to rely on our temperamental engine.  Yet we whine incessantly about the excess of wind that keeps us on anchor because it is too strong for us newbies to sail, it creates uncomfortable waves, and it ensures chilly days and nights in ports.  

I have never known the wind as I know her now.  I have wooed her as we bob along in the ocean, attempting to entice her to whisper a gust, a breeze, or even something more steady.  I have learned a healthy fear and respect of her power as I sat in my boat feeling like the wind is tearing through us with only a chain and metal scoop, dug into some sand, preventing her from pushing us onto a reef.  That feeling is worth sharing.

The precursor to a strong wind is a background noise, a buzz to which I fail to pay attention but know I should.  It sounds like a ghost sucking the air out of the night.  Then, it transforms from background into a powerful plane quickly approaching.  The roar of the jet engine comes quickly and unavoidably.  The halyards start to tap an eerie warning on the mast, which increases in pace and intensity, cementing my understanding that there is no escape.  Then, the rigging starts whistling and a hole in the metal piece around the backstay begins to play like a flute performing a lonely dirge.  The waves lift the boat up and let it crash down, creating a jarring thud against the hull as if the wind has soldered the water into something solid.  The ropes, the wood, and the fiberglass start to creak with an increasing energy that transfers to my gut.  When the jet plane arrives, the pressure from its force pushes down then pulls up on me, the boat, and the air as it passes over.

The power maintains like a fleet of jet planes continuing to fly by.  The consistency allows my brain to adapt and accept.  But then the percussion of the boat begins.  A cabinet door, slightly loose on its hinges, taps; a jar slides back and forth in a cabinet; the companionway stairs creak; and halyards continue their knocks on the mast at an allegro pace.  The tapping, sliding, creaking, and knocking drill into my head, reminding me of every nagging thing I said I would do, but did not.  The incessant performance taunts that one of those things will be our demise.  I think of the anchor’s set failing, the gear tied on deck escaping, and the lines and sail cover wearing through.  Yet, the wind handicaps me in a way that prohibits any double-checking at that point.  The sound deafens me.  The rocking steals my sense of balance.  The only thing I can look at, while standing on deck, are the white caps of the waves that are the wind’s army.  

The wind keeps us in our boat-cell until it decides to release us or to allow us to harness its power with our sails.  We were held by the wind in several spots along the Pacific coasts of the U.S. and Baja. It is those experiences that have kept me humble to and in awe of nature’s power.  Now, on the east side of Baja, in the Mar de Cortés, we have not been held up by such extreme blows.  Rather, we sit in anchorages waiting for the right wind.  We are traveling north, so we want the wind to blow from the south to eliminate the possibility of the boat beating into choppy waves and to allow for an easier point of sail.  And we want sufficient wind to allow us to sail, rather than motor.  The luxury of being picky about the type of wind we want to travel under is not lost on us after our tough ride from Portland, Oregon, to La Paz, Mexico.  Our experiences in the Mar de Cortés have been full of peace, beauty, ease, and new friends.  More details of the Sea in the next post.