Moving On

It has been too long between posts.  Some of it is laziness, my worst fault.  But we have been pretty busy.  A lot is happening as we prepare to leave Mazatlan for the Sea of Cortez, which will be our summer home.  Still hot, but little to no humidity.  More like what I am used to with heat.

My nephew arrived last Friday and is settling in beautifully.  He complements Mike and I very well, and has already learned to tie some pretty fancy knots.  He also read this book I have on sail handling, and was way ahead of each chapter in grasping the concepts.  And his Spanish gets better every day.  I am going to have to scramble to keep ahead of him in that area.  In other areas, I am not going to try to maintain superiority or even to keep up.  He is living in the vee berth and has made it his own. 

In a way, it is hard to leave Mazatlan because we are having a great time here.  I once heard that Mazatlan was a cruiser's black hole, because so many people stop here and then never leave.  I can see why.  It is a wonderful, vibrant city with a rich culture and people who are friendly and kind.  We have made a lot of friends here.  The music scene is wonderful with lots of great musicians playing all kinds of music.  The food is excellent - lots of choices and it is after all the shrimp capital.  I have never eaten so much seafood in my life!  My favorite is a dish called aguachile - I hope I am not repeating myself - which is shrimp marinated in lime juice and hot chile peppers.  It is wonderfully refreshing in this climate.  I like to buy a coconut, have them whack the top off, drink the coconut water, and then they cut all the fresh soft coconut out and put lime and chili powder on it.  I used to not like coconut, but that was because all I ever knew of it was in candy, like Mounds or Almond Joy.  Having it fresh is a whole new experience.  I made Mike get a machete so we can fix our own. 

The other thing we are looking forward to seafood-wise is catching our own dinner and diving for shellfish and lobster.  I figure by the time I am done with sailing, I will be a seafood chef extraordinaire.  (I have no idea how to spell that word.)  The Sea is a great fishing destination - I have fished there on other trips and on one week long trip we brought home 72 pounds of filets.  I am looking forward to getting clams especially.

It is kind of strange when you get ready to leave like this.  There are a million things - little, annoying things - that have to get tied up before you can go.  This time, we plan to be anchoring out away from any towns or settlements for almost a month, and will not be in regular communication with email and stuff like that, although I do have  the ability to make these posts and  send some email through the short wave radio.  So everything has to be caught up.  It is not easy to keep up on things sometimes - we only get our mail about once a month, so there have been occaisions when we missed stuff and had to scramble.  We do have a cell phone that can call the US, and there is always Skype although it has its drawbacks. 

The only thing that might hold us up is weather.  It is hurricane season here, which is a big reason why we are going north.  There has already been one named storm south of here, but it headed out towards Hawaii instead of coming here.  Now there are some ominous fronts down south again, and we are watching them.  They look to be headed well west of us, but you never know.  And even if they don't hit directly and remain a ways away, they do have an effect on the waves and currents.  So - we wait and watch.  Our plan is to be out of here on Tuesday - four days from now.  We still need to fed ex some stuff, get perishables (which will be done Monday, right before we leave), fill all the fuel tanks, settle up and the marina and check out of Mazatlan, and finally - stow the dinghy on the foredeck.  It is going to be great fun teaching my nephew how to sail.  I have no doubt whatsoever that by the end of the summer, he will be much better than I am (which won't take that long) and almost as good as Mike.  It has been a truly wonderful experience introducing him to this new life - not something one gets to do very often.  I am grateful for the opportunity to do this.  Everybody wins!           

Still hot . . .

and you know what?  I am going to stop beating myself up about it.  It is justplain hot and being comfortable in really hot weather never was my forte.  But as long as I get enough things done in the course of the day to keep us functioning - well, as far as I am concerned, that is enough.  I get meals prepared, dishes done, the cabin tidied, projects helped with, and horrid midday trips to Home Despot and Megafood just comepletely wear me out.

If it were this hot and humid in San Diego, and every now and then there is a heat wave with humidity, here is what I would be doing.  I would drag my sorry self to work and rush from my air conditioned car to my air conditioned office.  When I got off work, I would be in the pool or inside in front of a fan.  So it really isn't any different here, and I am not even sure why I have felt like such a loser for feeling such lassitude in this climate.  So there it is.  From now on, I am not going to feel bad about being totally unmotivated to do anything more than exist in this heat. 

That is it for today. 

It's HOT

Yes, I am going to continue to fuss about this.  It is HOT and HUMID and it is very uncomfortable.  I hope I get used to this, but I am not holding my breath.  Maybe when it is not so humid I'll feel better.  The only good thing is that it kills my appetite so I don't eat much, and because I am not eating much I am not drinking much either.  Except for ice water, of course!

My nephew will be here in a couple days - poor kid was just diagnosed with Lyme's, but he has medication and should be okay.  Once he gets here, we will begin preparations to leave for the Sea of Cortez.  The boat is in good shape, the provisioning is going well, and I think we have things under control.  We are watching a tropical depression near Acapulco that will likely develop into a tropical cyclone, and if so, and if it moves north, it could give us trouble.  But so far, so good.  We are officially in the hurrican season, after all.  I have begun identifying different "hurricane holes" in different areas of the Sea of Cortez, so we can head to those areas if the weather gets dicey.  

I feel bad that the blog has become so boring, but I lack motivation for just about everything these days.  Once we get moving again, things will pick up, I promise!   

We killed a bird . . .

or at least Mike did.  I felt real bad about it, but I had a feeling something like this was going to happen.  You see, we allowed a pair of what we think are martins to make their nest in our boom, which is covered with a furled sail and a sail cover.  We hoped that the babies would be gone by the time we decided to sail Magda Jean.  Well, yesterday, Mike found a freshly born baby bird on the deck.  It didn't even have feathers yet, and I don't know how to care for baby birds. It was just lying there.  Mike said birds sometimes push runty ones out of the nest.  So he finished it off rather than let it lie there.  I am glad I did not have to be there to see it.  We should not have let them nest there.  Another bad thing - I saw and killed a roach this morning.  Yuck!  Now I have to research getting rid of roaches in a space like this.  Great way to start the morning!

Otherwise - things are fine here.  My nephew, Walt, will be here in a few days - then we will head up into the Sea of Cortez for the long hot summer - but it is a dry heat, not humid like here.  More desert-y.  Warm, clear water.  Dorado.  Lots of good things.  We are also starting to look towards next year -     do we turn left or right at the Panama canal?  Europe or Tahiti?  They both have a strong pull.  I think the only thing we know for sure is that we want to spend most of the winter in Costa Rica.

I know this is a totally boring post, but I am sort of focused on getting rid of the roaches before I see more.  There are always more!