Being in Neiafu reminded us in many ways of being in La Paz. We had a great time in La Paz, and have a lot of great memories of good times with good friends there. Unfortunately, when we think of the town we also think of the bad apples in the ex-pat community. I don’t know if it was a fluke, or just our year, but we found that although most ex-pats living there were nice there were two annoying themes that kept repeating themselves: the cruiser-police who spread weird rumors and the angerballs. An example of the cruiser-police is the person who kept saying that if your Mexican courtesy flag was smaller than your ensign, you were insulting the Mexicans. The angerballs seem to restrict themselves to making rude and aggressive “anonymous” comments on the VHF. Both of these minorities left a bad taste in our mouths about La Paz, despite the fact that we had a great time there.

Apparently, we are capable of getting smarter ;)

Three months ago we rolled into Neiafu, which has a large ex-pat community, a regular cruiser net, and repeater stations on VHF channel 26 so both the net and cruiser hails can be heard even in the outlying anchorages. After a few hours of being on 26 and the next morning listening to one net, I realized that if we didn’t turn off that channel, we were going to have the same distaste for Neiafu. So we rolled our dial back to channel 16 and have spent the last 3 months enjoying the distance that our lack of participation puts between us and any drama. Now, we hear about the cruiser-police (e.g., trying to enforce a speed limit for dinghies of dubious legality that none of the Tongan drivers or dive boat follows) and the angerballs (e.g., the guy in the crowded mooring field who rows over and tells everyone to turn off their generators and dive compressors) as funny stories told to us by our friends over happy hour beers. Because we don’t have to hear either group directly, those stories are amusing to us, not frustrating.

We really like Neiafu which I’ll post about logbook style separately, and as you can hopefully see through our various posts, we have been having a world class time in Tonga.

We kept a sporadic video diary on our passage from Mexico to the Marquesas (early March departure 2012). We used a few different cameras and had some issues with our GoPro housing (our fault). I had to increase the volume on those videos which also increased the annoying popping sounds when we move our fingers on the camera. Amateur video, amateur video processing, etc.

Still, warts and all, we enjoyed watching this again last night. For those of you with an interest in bluewater sailing or friends and family with an interest in the weird way that our lives have taken a left turn, I think you will find in these videos a glimpse of what it was like for us to make an ocean passage.

The video is long (more than 30 minutes) so if you want to watch it, give yourself some time, make some popcorn, and ride along with us for 26 days.

We originally thought it would be fun to leave for the Pacific on my birthday because it is a Friday (violating superstition) but it was a bit too early for departure. On a side note, we had also really hoped for a Friday the 13th for either our Southbound departure or the Pacific departure but no dice yet.

Instead, I was able to celebrate my birthday in La Paz, surprise party style thanks to Carol, with SVs Eagle, Pyxis and Celestial and Marcelle. Note: All group shots courtesy of Tom on SV Eagle.

There were beers. More beers and Italian food. A serenade at the bar and to end things off, most excellent ice cream.

Everyone brought sweet gifts but I had to highlight the life preserver that I was given by Eva and James on Pyxis. Not only is it an actual Type IV flotation device, decorated with zebra print, it had a number of excellent abandon ship items sewn to and the lat/long of a number of important ports written on the side. Which abandon ship item is your favorite?

Thank you everyone for making another birthday on the road a special day!

These are mostly from our trip down the outside – documenting how the temperature and water gradually changed as we headed from Tofino to Cabo San Lucas.

First kiteboarding (in wetsuits): San Francisco (California)

First place Carol dove off of the boat before coffee: Catalina Island (California)

First foreign port:  Ensenada, Mexico. Because Livia is American, the US doesn’t count.

First sail off and onto anchor: From one side of the bay in San Quintin (Pacific side of Baja) to the other (hey – it counts). We’ve sailed off before and sailed on before, but never both in one run.

First “tropical” fish catch: Bonito – on passage to Bahia Tortugas (Pacific side of Baja)

Livia threw away her tattered fleece lined mittens: Bahia Tortugas

First passage where Livia did not wear a hat on night watch: On passage to Bahia Santa Maria (Pacific side of Baja)

First Dorado (a.k.a. Mahi Mahi): On passage to Bahia Santa Maria

First shirtless/bikini sailing day: On passage to Cabo San Lucas (Southern tip of Baja)

First time we thought “holy crap we need to finish installing those extra fans”: On passage to Cabo San Lucas

First place where we kayaked to a snorkel spot and snorkeled: Cabo San Lucas

Livia’s first free dive attempts: Cabo San Lucas

First margaritas at a beach bar (which we kayaked to): Cabo San Lucas

First time we realized that WE are that boat anchored in front of the tropical vacation spot: Cabo San Lucas

Better late than never, eh?

Carnaval in La Paz was a family friendly affair. A few nekkid butt cheeks aside, it was mostly a parade for the entire family, as evidenced by the large number of grandparents and children in evidence.

The floats were inventive. The mood was festive. And there were these fantastic blown out eggs with confetti that one could crack on one’s spouse’s head.

We had been warned not to stand on the street (*sigh*) during the parade but we still can’t figure out why. It was tame. Fun, but tame.

We went one night with SVs Pyxis and Calypso. On the night of the first parade we went with our “fancy camera” and took pictures and then on the night of the last parade we took Carol’s Mom with us and our smaller camera.

I took a lot of photos and I uploaded a few to this album. Enjoy!

I will always remember Mexico fondly as the first place that I bribed a police officer.

Truthfully, it was a team effort involving, Carol, my parents who were visiting, a car borrowed from a friend and myself (hover over photos for team names).

We parked in front of a restaurant in La Paz. Carol left the restaurant early to check on the truck. As we were paying, the person at the front of the restaurant told me there was a problem with where we were parked. I went outside and saw a line of cars with tickets on them and a police officer talking to Carol.

It turns out that the officer had ticketed everyone equally but had decided to wait in front of the car with California plates - to encourage us to "pay now". With our limited Spanish comprehension, his limited English and a lot of gesturing, he told us the ticket would cost 1000 pesos if we went to the station (most definitely a lie) but that we could pay $50USD now and he would tear up the ticket.

Carol got into the spirit of things, seeing that the position of power had altered with the officer's introduction of the topic of a bribe, and began bargaining. They agreed upon $25. When presented with the money the officer tried to reopen the bargaining for $40 but we stood firm at the agreed upon $25. This was, we figured, the price of a parking ticket back in Victoria and surely a substantial portion of his income, making it a reasonable deal for everyone.

We got some flack from a local who was upset that tourists pay the bribes because the people living them are trying to eliminate them. What she wanted us to have done was to have followed the officer to the station. I see her point but we were not interested in following the officer around town or in waiting several hours at the station to pay a substantially lesser fine. We also had a bit of gringo fear at getting any further involved with the police or visiting a police station. This, of course, the officer could have guessed as well.

More exciting than most tourist attractions, we paid $25 to ride the "Mordida Coaster". Good job Team Mordida!

In a way, we have been provisioning for our time in the Pacific since San Francisco. I began tucking away fun treats from the Trader Joe’s there to pull out some day when we needed something new. Then we made a mega Whole Food’s run in Long Beach thanks to Steve on our sistership Desolina. And we bought an enormous amount of canned chicken while sharing a taxi to the San Diego Costco with Bella Star. In the La Paz area we rented a car for two days for a preliminary trip to La Ventana and did a huge Walmart and Sam’s Club run while we had it. Later in La Paz we ended up with the loan of a car occasionally from friends we met here (thank you Pyxis!!!) and we continued to buy bags of extra goods each time we went to the store. We might buy 10 bags of oats that trip, a dozen cans of salsa or stock up on lentils. Recently, we made the drive down to the Costco in Cabo San Lucas, partially because we wanted to see Todos Santos and some of the scenery and partially because the idea of stocking up on Kirkland brand pre-cooked bacon was just too difficult to pass up (see video).  Tip: after we convinced Costco Cabo we had a good reason not to purchase a membership, they gave us a day pass for free

Our general strategy: In general our strategy is to never walk past a grocery on our way home without buying a bag and to never pass up an opportunity to buy heavy things like liquids (juice, wine, beer, vinegar) when we are lucky enough to not have to carry them (car, bikes, etc). With regard to our Pacific voyage, we aren’t the type of people who want to keep up with food consumption via a spreadsheet. A great idea that will never work for our personalities. We aren’t very worried about running out of particular items as long as we have enough food generally (except coffee – more on that). Our main goal with the huge amounts of provisioning we’ve been doing is to save money when things are more expensive in the islands, to minimize the amount of time we spend searching for food there, and to take advantage of having a vehicle and not carrying loads of provisions on our back.

What we did: Over the years we have re-organized our stores again and again. The end result is that the areas we have for food in the boat are separated by types of food and the size of the area is approximately proportional to the amount of that type of food we eat. There are some exceptions of course. Bulky items like toilet paper and chips are consumed faster than the amount of storage for them. In the case of the former, we just buy it more frequently and in the case of the latter we switch to popcorn when we run out. So, because the proportions of storage already approximate the proportions of what we eat, what we did was to provision in a gradual way focusing on important items. I opened the “snack cubby” and thought about what we most wanted in there (salsa, crackers, spreads, olives). Then I bought a bunch of those and stowed them. Then I evaluated how much more we could fit in that cubby and bought that much more snacks. Same with canned goods. Same with the “pasta/soup/tea” cubby, etc. Once each area was packed to the gills, we were done.

Exceptions: Everyone has something that they are afraid to do without. For us, good coffee is something we want to have aboard. It may be available in the next port but we don’t want to leave a port without a large supply. We’ve found a good roastery in La Paz and will be buying beans there (La Choya). Second, we did overbuy long life meats and cheeses because those allow us to stretch our supplies with what we can find in expensive or low stocked areas. Also, although I said we aren’t interested in spreadsheets, we did calculate consumption for a few items. We planned on two cans of chicken a week for 6 months (48), estimated our coffee intake and if something had an expiration, we estimated how much of it we would use per month and multiplied that by months until expiration (1 package per month * expires in 7 months = 7 packs of bacon in the bottom of the fridge). The final exception is booze. Apparently astronomically expensive in the South Pacific and so the advice we had been given was to load up on whatever you can safely carry and be prepared to have it bonded (sealed) somewhere in your boat if customs wants.

So…we’ll see how this works and report back in a year!

We've spent the last 3 weeks in a tent in La Ventana, Mexico - a wind sport hot spot. It wasn't until the last few days of the trip that I started to miss the boat and that made me realize that I needed a break. A break from the boat was good, but more importantly perhaps, I needed a break from cruising. Why?

My life simplified dramatically. Contrary to popular belief, living on a boat, at least for us, isn’t living simply. Without the boat we didn’t have logistics, repairs and maintenance to deal with.The only daily maintenance we had was stretching, cooking/cleaning, and finding groceries. Otherwise our life revolved around the wind and our newly evolving kiting skills. We woke up and made french press coffee which we drank on our cushy air mattress in the tent while listening to our daily dose of NPR. Next we made scrambled eggs and tortillas, answered emails and started looking at the wind. When the wind started to come up, we grabbed our gear and headed for the beach. After we had exhausted ourselves on the water, or the wind died, we had hot showers, cooked a dinner and either had a beer with people or watched a movie with popcorn in our tent.

I  enjoyed being part of an outdoor sports community again intensely. I had not realized how much I missed being around people who are super stoked about what they are doing...and perhaps I had not realized how few cruisers I meet radiate joy about their cruising life. In any outdoor sport, there are some people who ooze anxiety and fear (and I've certainly done my fair share of that), but the majority, at least in sports I’ve been involved in, exude happiness. Although we meet excited cruisers, at least so far, more cruisers we meet seem to be on the anxiety side of the balance. In our limited experience, kiters (and in our previous experience, rock climbers) are more excited about being wherever they are and doing what they are doing. They watch videos about it. They talk through issues with each other. Even after many years, they radiate a quieter joy about their sport. I get a lot personally from being around people like that. I realize many of the people I met were on vacation from their own realities, but about half the people we met in La Ventana were living there for an entire season.

Also, not to get into the gender politics of cruising too much again, but if a woman was on the beach in a wetsuit, she was either into kiting or into windsurfing. Not necessarily so on the docks. This meant that when people met me, they assumed I was a) kiting (or wind surfing) and b) stoked about it. It was a very nice change of culture for me. There are fewer women in kiting, just like in climbing, but they are often the type of person I form instant connections with.

Non-boaters reminded me that what we are doing is unusual and pretty darn sweet. When you are surrounded by people who are cruising, it starts to feel normal. When you tell non-boaters what you are doing they say things like “You brought your boat down from CANADA?!”. My favorite comment was from an extreme sports junkie, who had described doing many things that we would never do because they are too risky, and he said “I would never go into the ocean. That would be too scary.”

I started to miss the boat and miss being mobile. It was good to get away from the boat long enough to actively miss my life aboard. Although I enjoyed growing roots in La Ventana, I started getting itchy feet. I also reached that point in traveling where I started missing my home, my things, and my routines. The same simplicity of our life in the tent started to wear a little and I missed all of the other options I had for fun, for comfort and for connectivity on our boat. The break invigorated my cruising dreams.

When we are full water, full fuel and full provisions we ride a little lower in the waterline and the area of the hull that isn’t protected by special paint is underwater. As we eat, drink and be merry, the boat gets lighter and we go back to our painted waterline.

In BC we had never had any substantial barnacle growth. Maybe a half dozen after a year and all below the waterline. Well, we had that many just on our waterline and down below was a little factory. Even though the ones at the waterline were out of the water, apparently the barnacles survived thrived by staying wet with the splashes from wavelets.

We hired a diver for the first time to clean our entire bottom. Carol had done some cleaning of the prop and bottom free diving and even changed one of our zincs. It is an exhausting job and we were delighted to pay someone $1/foot to roll out their full barnacle killing, gentle hull cleaning accoutrement.

La Paz is known for whale sharks. Giant, gentle beasts that feed on tiny shrimps. Those tiny shrimps are what is coating the diver in these photos. We can hear them all throughout the night through our hull making little clicking sounds.

Our prop is now running without cavitations and we gained at least a knot of speed under power and probably half of that under sail from having a clean hull.

After posting the last bit, I realized I hadn’t mentioned our time at Caleta Partida except in reference to watersports.

It was a windy place and we were excited about that because we had hoped to kiteboard. Unfortunately, high peaks make for gusty conditions and thus no kiteboarding. Caleta Partida is a bay formed by the intersection of two islands: Islas Partida and Espirtu Santo.

We followed Camanoe through the pass between the islands to see the sea caves on the other side. There were two big caves and one would have made the perfect secluded (slightly scary) skinny dipping spot if it had been a touch warmer and if we hadn’t had those pesky Camanoe folks ;)

In addition to the usual characters, we hung out with Pyxis and partook of their inflatable SUP towing craziness. Fun, fun folks.