Welcome to My World

This is the first posting in what I hope will be a long list of adventures. 

My husband Mike and I bought this boat after selling our house and all (well, almost all) of our possessions.  Mike had already retired and I was on the brink.  One of our biggest dilemmas was where we wanted to live after we retired.  We spent a fair amount of time travelling, and it seemed like everywhere we went, we said "let's live here!"  Then it would be on to the next place, and it would happen again.  We liked everything!  Almost every place we went seemed to have something special.  For awile we entertained the idea of buying a camper (I am not and never will be an RV person) but that limited us to places we could drive to - which means at least a semblence of good roads because a four wheel drive camper appeared to be expensive and hard to come by.  Then, about a year ago, everthing changed.

We decided to take sailing lessons.  Because Mike is a Navy retiree, we were able to take advantage of all that was offered on the Navy bases here in San Diego.  The lessons were affordable, and that was all it took.  We began spending all our weekends renting sailboats and sailing around San Diego Bay.  It was great.

I've always enjoyed reading about sailors who go around the world in small boats.  I've been the proverbial armchair explorer for most of my life.  Mike brought me out into the real world, teaching me how to camp and enjoy being out in nature without being scared of everything.  (OK, I adimit I am still working on that one.  But I can now stand still and look at a snake without feeling a need to run in the opposite direction.)  He taught me about fishing, and taking care to leave things as they were found, if not better.  We went camping in Mexico and Missouri, and driven jeep trails all over the west.  If not for Mike, I would likely never have seen a shooting star, an enormous dust devil, or a rattlesnake, a bobcat, and a ring tail outside of a zoo.  I would never have drank river water through a strainer, and I would never have gotten drunk in a brothel in Ely, Nevada.  So - it was not a surprize when Mike said we should retire on a sailboat.  (He says it was my idea.  I think he divined what I wanted before I knew it.)

By this time I was afraid we would go broke renting sailboats, so we bought a 25 foot practice boat.  Her name is Finesse and she served us well.  We sailed her all around the bay and out to sea a bit.  We also sailed her down to Ensenada, where all the people in the marina thought we were tough for coming all the way down there in a 25 footer.  To be honest, it wasn't hard, but it took over 30 hours to get home due to practically no wind, and what there was of it was against us.  But we loved it, and that trip was the turning point - we knew we were going to sea.

We found Magda Jean here in San Diego and knew she was for us.   We named her after our mothers. (Magda is Mike's mom and Jean was my mom.)  We did a lot of research, and determined this was the sort of boat we wanted.  Valiant 40s were designed to combine the best of the cruising sailboat (built for comfort and ease of sailing) and the performance racing designs.  Magda Jean has it all.

We are in the process of getting her fixed up with all new navigation systems, new rigging, and more stuff that I care to think about.  Mike has done a tremendous amount of the work himself, and in the process earned himself a job offer at the shipyard.  (He turned it down.)  Our plan is to leave for Mexico in October, and between now and then, to finish the upgrades and sail her as much as we possibly can  between now and then.  As I learn to handle the technical side of this blog, I will post pictures and maybe even video.  See you next post!