The Wet Edge: The big Easy

Our beloved house is sold and we will need to go home to move everything out and prepare for a new phase of life.

What exactly that will be, is hard to imagine right now.

It feels a little intimidating, letting go of that security...Kind of like having your engine konk out on you - scary, but if you're lucky enough to be on a sailboat, you should manage alright... just put up the sails and wait and see where the wind and current takes you and deal with whatever issues there are as you can.

As it stands, this new development rearranged our cruising plans. Rather than head North, to Bahia de Los Angeles ( destination, de rigueur, for the hardcore summer cruisers of the Sea of Cortez) we opted to stay in the vicinity of Escondido.

In a few weeks, we will leave the boat in safe harbor, fly home to sort things out and figure the rest out on the fly, I assume.

The idea of Home hovers like an oasis in everyone's mind.

I can't wait to see my mom and my girlfriends. The kids miss grandparents and friends, Jon looks forward to meeting his first niece - on the way this August!

We all miss showers and fresh spinach and In-and-Out burgers and everyone cannot wait to see flowers and trees and green grass.

At the same time, the Sea has permeated us with it's dreaminess. It will be hard to leave the stillness and the sunsets, waking up to the piercing cry of Ospreys, the sleepy sea turtles bumping the boat or a clumsy juvenile pelican waddling along with you on your morning beach walk.

We exist between two worlds now. We miss our family and friends so much. We fret about work and money and what we will do about them in the future...but being here and doing this, has been so unbelievable, it's worth all the sacrifices and minor hardships - the constant vigilance to avoid death and bodily harm. Making your own water and power everyday or you're hooped, (as in dying, literally, of thirst) fixing everything that breaks when you have no idea what you're doing, being engineer, mechanic, doctor, therapist, and plumber on a daily basis, having to look-out every step that you, or your children take, for stingrays and rattlesnakes, scorpions and tarantulas. There is the battle that is homeschool (some days), the endless rice and beans, the wet suit rashes, swimmer's ear and jellyfish stings, the salt-stiff clothes and never enough water to wash your towels properly. Some days, I get through by fantasizing about the air-conditioned sanctuary of Nordstroms and racks of clean, pretty clothes, I don't even want to buy or wear them, just touch and smell. I dream about a marble bathroom with an attendant handing me a clean hand towel, or eating lunch in a restaurant with fresh white linens, and a waiter serving me something I didn't watch gorking through it's final death spasms as my husband stabs it in the eye with an ice-pick. This isn't most days though, and it usually only happens when I'm forced to bake bread, (in the 100 degree sweat-lodge, that is our boat) because we have run out of tortillas while Jon mucks out a blocked head-hose (a wretched, suffering business but the alternative is unspeakable) and there's nothing fresh left in the dank and dark recesses of the luke-warm coffin that we call a fridge...But these things are minor and pale, compared to the greater glory of adventure and self-sufficiency and the joy of allowing your children to be free and roam wild, to play on the beach naked and swim before breakfast everyday.

A few years back, I was lamenting to Jon that I lost God. Not like, in a grand, soul-suffering way but as in...I don't believe in Santa Claus anymore. I had read too many books, gotten too hip to the game, wised up to the racket and I just couldn't believe in that hooey anymore..

As a result, I felt a little more alone for it all. I left the Garden and something died in me- a little of the magic was gone. Once you eat the apple you're out. Gone baby, gone.

One of the great gifts of being out here in all this beauty, is that there IS a back door to Eden and I snuck back in. I don't have to believe the hype anymore but now-a-days, I wake up every morning in Gods arms.

And she doesn't care if I'm good or bad or naked or wearing a sequined mini-dress.

We set out for Isla Coronados to reconnect with Eyoni and Ethan, Nancy and Zada.

There are two other kid boats around right now, each with two children younger than Hunter and everyone seemed to end up in Isla C. this time. The other boats have small boys and Eyoni and Pura Vida make a good fit with our girls, so the beach was full of the sounds of little brown children playing in the water and the bay was buzzing with dingys zooming back and forth. We spent a day hiking the volcano and fishing. The water visibility was poor and we were itchy to see clear water again, so we decided to buddy boat with Eyoni up to Jaunico. We hung back for a day, as Pura Vida was low on supplies and detoured to the Sunday farmers market in Loreto. This was our first experience with doing this sort of thing while cruising. There is no real anchorage in Loreto, it's open roadstead but there is good holding so it is possible to throw down your hook and make a mad dash for town and back again before the wind comes up. We left at dawn when the wind was calmest and anchored off the pier and raced in the "dink" ( dingy) over to the Panga( mexican fishing boat) dock with our lists and our empty grocery bags and the few items of trash we had accumulated. Trash flow is surprisingly low these days- but it takes some forethought. Even after weeks out, we usually only have one or two small bags. Every purchase you make on this cruise, you have to figure out what kind of trash it will eventually produce and how you will deal with it. Green waste is easy. We dingy that to deep water and feed the turtles but every bit of cardboard or paper, every bottle of tequila or hotsauce, every can, or jar, every piece of tin foil, tape, candy wrapper, potato chip bag, every rubber band... is trash that you will carry for weeks. In other words- you better really want that sucker. Some of the islands around here are National park, so you can't burn the cardboard or paper in a bonfire, either. We try not to buy anything that makes bulky trash in the first place. We bring our own containers to the tiendas and fill them with beans and rice, we strip the cereal boxes of the cardboard before we leave the beach so we don't have it on board (this trick also keeps the roaches off the boat - bugs love to lie hidden in cardboard-and many of the small pueblos we visit don't get a lot of business, so, those boxes of detergent on the shelf have been roach motels for years. I'm all for living close to nature but I refuse to play hostess to critters on a boat) everything is thoroughly inspected and considered before being allowed aboard.

This is probably the best lesson on recycling you can ever teach a kid. It's an amazing pain in the ass, humping your nasty trash around for a month. Blue boxes and recycle bins back home are awesome but the problem is still, that one makes epic amounts of trash when it just gets carted away and you don't have to look at it anymore. When all your waste is double bagged and stored in your shower for a month-because you can't make enough water for an actual shower anyway, or generate enough solar power to run the water heater and have your fridge still work- you (and your children) start to REALLY understand the concepts of REDUCE, RE-USE, RE-CYCLE.

I admit to feeling oh-so smug when we show up at the dock, a family of four, with only a small bag of trash after three weeks on the hook.

Jon met a guy, awhile back who had CARRIED every single piece of trash he made for a YEAR in his back pack. Admirable, but...yuck.

We were told the Sunday farmers market in Loreto was "down in the arroyo". We had no idea where that was and supposed we would just wander until we found it.

We scrambled out of our dingy and some local kids on the dock helped to tie us up and took our trash from our hands. We felt guilty for bringing our lock with us. These beautiful, brown-eyed children, playing in the water and smiling and helping us carry our stuff out of the boat hardly seemed like the shady characters everyone is told abound in Mexico, when you read the newspapers up North. We know that some places there is a problem with dingy theft, so that's why we bring the lock - hey, you don't leave your bike unlocked in Venice beach either...but the kids told us not to worry about locking, they would watch it for us. We gave them a few pesos and practiced our Spanish with them and all the kids and the fisherman on the dock were, like everyone we have met down here, absolutely lovely. The further up you go in the Baja - away from Cabo - the more entranced by the people you become. The are predominately sweet and shy and "traditional". Women are incredibly modest. You see families at the beach on Sundays and the women all swim in their jeans. Even when it;s like a million degrees out. They proabably can't afford bathing suits anyway but you rarely see ANYONE over the age of six, in shorts here.

We met another cruiser coming in on his dingy at the same time, he and his wife and FIVE children had sailed the world many years ago and after wonderful experiences and thousands of sea-miles, they finally ran out of funds. They returned to Alberta and worked to refill the coffers for fifteen years and the kids went on to college and now he and the wife had retired (again) and were out here doing it once more. He was wonderful and he knew exactly where the market was so we had an excellent guide on the mile or so walk to the arroyo.

The market is the weekly gig for all the farmers in the area and after church in the morning, everyone shops and eats and gossips, before heading off to the beach with their families to eat and siesta and swim. Sunday is all about family and God in Mexico and everyone is happy and relaxed. The display was the best we've seen yet . While I loaded as much fruit and veg as we could carry, the kids managed to find some great cheap used shoes-they both have grown so much in the past four months that there's went in our "gently used" bag that we keep for trading or giving to the local panga fisherman.

We lugged everything we could carry back to the boat and raised the hook just as the wind came up.

Mostly, it's pretty calm in the Sea but for the next week things would be different.

There were quite a few systems converging and the Sea was kicking up pretty good as we sailed for Jaunico-we had great wind-but my job (below decks )of storing all our goodies from Loreto was fairly challenging. Lovely, huge, Mexican oranges launched themselves like grenades every time we hit a wave and eggs ( they don't come in cartons down here) are always a challenge until you get them stowed properly, especially when your pitching and rolling around. It was like a Cirque De Soliel show, with me juggling and balancing and dancing across the salon, trying to keep it all safe and get it all tucked away before anything got ruined.

It was blowing pretty good when we got to Jaunico and the bay was rolling with surge. Time to head back to the old" Ramada Inn" that we had visited with Mom and Cynthia. We came around the bend and there she was. La Ramada, safe and calm in the howling Southerly, just as she had been the last time we were here.

When we arrived there was already one other boat and Eyoni was just ahead of us, putting down her anchor. Eyoni has a centerboard, so she has, like, a three foot draft and can tuck up close to the beach. We got settled and thought we would spend a day or two before the weather cleared and we could sail back for Jaunico.

We spent ELEVEN days in Ramada!

The weather was rough for the Sea and Ramada was the place to be - we had one night where THIRTEEN boats tucked into the tiny cove. Lots of folks were heading North to Bay of Conception for the Fourth of July and Ramada was the only safe anchorage in the conditions. We all squeezed in and everyone kept a close eye on the storm cells building to the East. In the summer months, the Sea of Cortez gets hit with Chubascos. These are fronts that come down with a vengeance, from the Sierra Madres in the East and race out across the Sea of Cortez. They can blow like hell, (fifty knots) and are accompanied by terrific lighting-always terrifying to a sailor- and they happen, somewhere, pretty much every night. You just have to look East at night and you can see an awesome storm on the horizon. There is no way to exactly predict where they will land, so most people just tie down everything at night, secure your dink to the deck, take down your extra shade canvass and hope your anchorage isn't too crowded if one hits you. The big fear is being in an anchorage where there is an open fetch in the direction of the storm. Where the seas have a chance to build over miles and miles of open ocean and come straight in at your anchorage you can end up bouncing around on ten foot swells on your hook. Luckily, not many people have been through that but most everyone here has had an experience or two with a Chubasco hitting them smack on the head, so we prepare the boat every night and listen to the 'Chewy report" on the VHF for warnings of where anything particularly nasty might come from.

One morning, in Ramada, a single-hander had limped into the anchorage with a shredded spinnaker hanging from his masthead. The place was packed with boats and only Jon recognized the red sails of the big ketch and hailed the skipper on the radio. He was fine, just caught a bad break and his sail had wrapped in a big gust and shredded on the forestay. It's tricky to get those things down though and as he motored in and dropped his anchor all the skippers in the cove hung over their rails, watching through binoculars. Skippers just LOVE a little drama in the anchorage - as long as it's on someone else's boat. The chance to go and advise and hum and haw and pull your beard and generally just shoot the shit with some unlucky bastard who's worse off than you, is irresistible. As soon as the poor man's anchor was set, every captain in the cove jumped in his Dink and zoomed over to see what they could do. It's a male version of the Welcome Wagon - only they bring beer instead of muffins.

The guy happened to have travelled the world. Forty countries in fifteen years and learned many secret magics from the Sadus in India and he possessed now a great power over fire. As a way of thanking all the Hands that helped him get his tattered sail down, he gave everyone a show on the beach that night. He made silly balloons for the kids and when the sun set the fire show began. He juggled it and danced with it (much as I did with oranges and eggs) and swallowed it. I learned later that night that swallowing fire is not at all good for you. As we were anchored right next to him, I spent the better part of the night listening to him coughing up his lungs.

The good hearted Nancy from Eyoni rallied Hunter and Zada the next morning to dingy around the anchorage with a hat to raise some tips for the lonely sailor. They managed as much as fifty dollars out of everyone and somehow creative Nancy stuffed all the pesos into a ballon that she blew up and the girls presented it to him.

He was an interesting cat.

I didn't have the heart to tell the kind and good Nancy or our sweet little girls, that I was pretty sure the dude had more Moolah than any of us and hardly needed our charity. Jon had been aboard his boat a few times and discovered that he had re-powered/re-fitted it out to the highest degree.

Another (lucrative) secret learned from the Indian Sadus, I suppose.

We had a grand time with Eyoni in Ramada. Nancy and I did leg lunges on the sand and gossiped and laughed while the girls played barbies in the water. Kai went spearfishing with his dad and Ethan, we all made many pot-lucks and when we couldn't catch or spear anything, we were lucky to have Ethan providing us with grouper and snapper and yellowtail galore. Kai got super excellent at diving for clams and he would just jump overboard and come up with a bag full of the most delicious clams you have ever eaten. I got into coming up with new recipes and we had curry and sugar fried grouper, fresh fish tacos with toasted sunflower seeds and homemade tomatillo salsa, Pasta vongole made with the el chocolate clams and chipoltle cream sauce. There was a Sri Lankan phase (inspired by the wonderful book - REEF - given to me by Aunt Marion) fish curries in coconut sauce, spiced with thinly sliced Jalepenos and served on fragrant rice seasoned with cinnamon and tumeric.

There was even a spicy sausage paella made with fresh clams and seafood made authentic by my awesome new Paella pan (given to me by Ceebs before we left) and precious saffron threads I (luckily) happened upon in a market back in La Paz.

Outside the tiny gastronomic haven of Ramda, the wind blew and the sea roiled and far across the ocean, giant anvil thunderheads glowered in hellish flashes of orange and red but we were happy and safe...and well fed. One does poke one's head through the hatch a few times a night though, just to make sure nothing wicked our way comes. Jon says I'm like like a meerkat popping out of her hole a hundred times a night, ready to alert the family if sudden an immediate death is approaching-but other than that, it's pretty chill.

Ok. So, I take a lot of pictures but my new friend Nancy takes great, great photographs and she was kind enough to share hers with me so I could share them with you.

Mucho love love love to all from all of us.