A Year and a Day

Pacific Mexico Food Roundup

–by Arlo

When we left home, we left our favorite taqueria, Ramiro and Sons. I have always loved Mexican food in California. AInd though Mexican food in Mexico is very different from California’s Mexican food, it is at least as tasty as California’s Mexican food, and it has much more variety than what you will find in a taqueria in the Bay Area. Here is a roundup of all the Mexican food that we ate from Ensenada to Bahia Tenacatita.

As we walked up the streets of La Cruz, I was going crazy with all of the yummy looking taco shops on the street. What you come accross most of in Pacific Mexico is tacos and quesadillas. We have eaten fish tacos (pesca), octopus tacos (pulpo), shrimp tacos (camaron), and countless more. My personal favorite was from a resturant in La Cruz, called “La Silla Roja”. Not surprisingly, it had red chairs. Their street-side tables seemed like the best place to be in the world when you sat down at 8 p.m. as the heat of the day was turning into the cooler evening. Their best dish (in my opinion), was the “quesadilla mamalona”. This tasty morsel was 8 or 10 inches long and stuffed to the brim with your choice of asada, adobada, or chorizo. I tried all three, and they were all equally delicious.

The other thing which they have quite a lot of in Mexico is seafood. In San Quintin, we had fresh clams, and in San Jose del Cabo, I tried octopus in the form of the above mentioned tacos, and decided that it was a new favorite. Shrimp are plentiful, appearing everywhere from quesadillas to el “rollo del mar,” a bacon-wrapped fish fillet stuffed with shrimp and doused in rich, creamy, almond sauce. The Mexicans use spear, net, and longline to catch fish from their pangas, or fiberglass boats. It is a common sight in pacific Mexico to see the pangueros, or fishermen, walking up from their boats to a palapa resturant on the beach, and then cleaning the fish that you ordered right there in front of the resturant.

The food just got better and better as we went south, and when we got to La Cruz, we found a paleteria, or ice cream shop that we discovered to have very good ice cream cones as well as paletas, which this shop sold as a tasty combination of chocolate and ice cream on a popsicle stick.

With this much variety in food, I invariably ended up trying some new things. Some of them I came to love, like tomatillas, which taste like a sweeter green tomato, chayote squash, and octopus. trying some of these new things led to some of the best eating experiences so far on the trip. Some of the new things that I tried, I didn’t love quite as much, like de-spined, cooked, cactus, and some odd little seedpods that roadside venders were selling, called guamachiles. We came upon these little seedpods on a road trip to the mountain town of San Sebastian in a rented car. On the way up, our curiosity got the better of us, and we bought a big bag, full to the brim. We first disliked them, then we came to think of them as half-decent, and then they fell out of favor once more. But some of the new foods I straight up disliked, for some inexplicable reason, such as mole, an unsweetened chocolate sauce often served with chicken. Looking back at my whole food experience in Mexico so far, I am more than satisfied, but I would not go as far as to say that I am satiated, and I could probably handle a couple more paletas just fine.

Update from Barra de Navidad

–from Caitlin + Jason

We’re writing and posting this one from a cell phone, and we can’t figure out how to move the pictures to place them where they make the most sense. So they’re mostly clustered at the end. Please forgive/enjoy the randomness.

The 150 miles of coastline south from La Cruz in the Puerto Vallarta area to Bahia Manzanillo, where we will anchor in a few days, has more harbors than the entire 850 mile coast of Baja, and we’ve slowed down to enjoy them. Another reason we’re moving slowly is that there hasn’t been much wind. The forecast, predictable for this time of year here, is so often for light and variable winds.

All these days at anchor have been busy.

Caitlin & Alma repair a sail cover at anchor. Alma is doing most of the work, turning the handle on the hand-cranked sewing machine.

In addition to working on the boat—this is endless and there’s a long list of jobs to check off before we jump across the Pacific—we’ve been in the water, both intentionally (snorkeling) and unintentionally (flipping the dinghy in a botched surf landing), doing school work, kayaking, exploring a mangrove estuary (we rowed by a small crocodile!), eating at beachside palapa restaurants, fishing, cooking, visiting with other cruising boats, and swimming some more.

Tonight we are anchored in the shallow lagoon at Barra de Navidad. This is a domestic tourist destination, and the beaches and streets are packed with families from all over Mexico enjoying the santa semana. We joined the crowd ashore today. Tomorrow we’ll stay on the boat to celebrate Easter by painting the mizzen mast and sailing the dinghy.

We had a bit of a change of plans earlier this month, shortly after we last wrote. The three or four days we meant to spend reprovisioning and working on the boat dockside in La Cruz turned into ten days when Jason landed in a hospital for surgery

to repair a hernia. Tuesday night he became aware of the issue, Wednesday morning he popped into a little farmacia to speak with a doctor, and by Wednesday afternoon, we had taken the bus to a hospital in Puerto Vallarta, where Jason was admitted

for surgery the following morning. There was no emergency, and we could only imagine how long the series of appointments and office visits would have taken to get the same surgery in the United States.

Jason’s surgeon seemed to run the hospital, and with his jeans, and shirt open under his blazer, he looked more like a Hollywood producer than a gastroenterologist. But Jason fared well under his care and is, just over two weeks later, all but back to full strength. It turns out Mexican hospitals do not, unfortunately, serve carne asada tacos.

To pass the time while Jason recovered, we rented a car and spent a couple of days in the mountains above Bahia Banderas. It was good to leave the heat of the coast and we loved the beautiful town of San Sebastian, where we stayed in a 300-year old adobe home and walked along ancient sunken stone paths through the pine forest. Getting to the top of the mountain above San Sebastian was more than our little sedan could take—the steep cobbled roads wound up and down improbably—and we gave up, likely just before the top.

Though we enjoyed the mountain excursion, the town of La Cruz, and new friends on other boats at the marina, we were relieved, finally, to take in our dock lines and to be on our way again. The sailing has been gentle, though sometimes through water stained a shocking deep red by plankton. We had read about a red tide but none of us had seen one. The ocean truly looks like its bleeding, and it leaves us feeling uneasy. But then the water is suddenly blue again. Or the light turquoise of water over sand

We’ll try not to post too many pictures of dolphins, but look at this guy.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll see friends and—mostly—work to prepare the boat for the 3,000 mile passage to the Marquesas. During the passage and during the six months we are in French Polynesia, we’ll be less frequently connected to the internet. Our friend Mark has kindly agreed to post messages to the blog as we are able to send them to him, though there will have to be fewer pictures. Whenever we do get internet we’ll look forward to hearing from you—in messages on the blog or by email.

Tomorrow we’ll find out if the Easter Bunny can find us on Debonair.

Rowing up a mangrove estuary just after dawn.

Alma gets to tend bar, yup, for real, at a pizzeria during our week and a half in La Cruz.

Sea Creatures

–by Alma

Arlo holding the flying fish that landed on our deck!

Lots of people think that the ocean is empty except for little goldfish. We haven’t seen any of those, but we have been seeing many other types of sea creatures. Before we left, I was thinking a lot about the places we’d go, and I didn’t think as much about the wildlife we’d see. But there’s a lot of it! On 3/4/18, my half birthday, we anchored at Isla Isabel-Mexico’s Galapagos–so it seemed like an awesome time to write about sea creatures!

We have seen lots of sea mammals, which can be broken up into cetaceans and pinnipeds. Cetaceans are animals like whales and dolphins. Pinnipeds are things like seals, sea lions, and elephant seals. We have seen all of those. We have seen lots of seals and sea lions the whole way, but we only saw elephant seals at San Miguel in the Channel Islands. The beach was covered in them. The males have big inflatable noses and weigh a maximum of 4,500 pounds! We have also seen lots of dolphins.

At one point, we saw them playing under the bow (front) of the boat! There were about a dozen of them for about ten minutes! In Bahia Magdalena, we saw a mother and baby gray whale swimming together. While we were sailing, we saw a humpback whale breech six times, and then a different humpback whale breech nine times. More recently, we saw humpback whales “lobster tailing” or hitting the water with their tails. You could hear a thud a few seconds after because of the distance.

We have also seen turtles. The first day, we just saw one. Then a few days later, we saw a bunch–everywhere you looked. They looked like floating rocks. They were funny. They just sat there paddling every so often. We’ve continued to see sea turtles all along the coast of Mexico.

The thing that we have seen most variety in is sea birds. I will have a list of all of them all later. My favorites were the frigate birds with long forked tails. The males can inflate a big red balloon under their beaks. When they tap their beaks against this “balloon” it makes a vibrating drum sound. We also saw the fluffy frigate bird chicks!

Another thing that we have seen is animals in tide pools, from sea anemones that curl up when you touch them, to crabs, to clams that you dig up with your toes.

We have also seen lots of other miscellaneous sea creatures, like flying fish (one landed on our deck) and rays that jump and splash the surface. Also, we saw little jellyfish that don’t sting and a huge sunfish. Four squids landed on our deck as well! At night, we see bio-luminescent zooplankton. Bio-luminescent zooplankton are microscopic organisms that glow when the water is churned up.

As you can see, the ocean is definitely not empty! It is full of life, and we are seeing so much! Though definitely not all of it.

Birds We’ve Seen:

Frigate birds
Tropic birds
Turns
Pelicans
Cormorants
Guillemots
Shear waters
Osprey
Brown Boobies
Great blue herons
Egrets

Small Spaces

—by Arlo

As the tallest person in the family, I thought that I would write about living in small spaces. One of the biggest differences, between life at home and life on the boat is how all of our living spaces are are so much smaller on the boat.

My sister’s and my cabin, looking foreward

The place where I notice this the most is in the cabin that Alma and I share, the forepeak, at the very front of the boat. Compared to my room at home it is very small, and the floor is only 10 feet square so only one person can do anything at at time. My sister and I have to take turns being in it, and

The same cabin, looking in the other direction

because there is no room for a dresser, all of our clothes are stored in cubbies. But small isn’t all bad—my bunk is not too small, and it is the only place on the boat besides the head (bathroom), that has some privacy. I brought my blanket from home, which is also nice.

Me with a fish that I caught and cooked, you can see the sink in the front and the two kettles in the back, one for saltwater, one for freshwater

Another place where you really notice the size difference is in the kitchen, or galley. In the galley there is a three burner gimbaled stove with an oven, a sink with salt and freshwater pumps, and meager counter space. Under the counter, there are lots of racks of baskets for storing food. Compared to our kitchen at home, it is tiny.

The head, you can see the toilet, sink, and cabinets

The head is the smallest room aboard, maybe an eighth of the size of our bathroom at home. It has a sink, two cupboards, and toilet, which you have to pump to flush. The head is pretty much just a downsized regular bathroom, without a bathtub or shower. All in all, you get used to living in these small spaces, more quickly than one might expect, although I wont be sad to have my bedroom back when we get home.

Across to the Mainland

From: Jason

Our three-day passage from Baja California to mainland Mexico was another turning point: from the cool of the West Coast of Baja, to the deep and humid heat of this coast, from the tans and yellows and reds of the desert peaks, to the green lushness of these high ridges, from longer, harder passages along a remote exposed shore, to smaller hops from anchorage to anchorage, from the megafauna of the Baja Coast, the whales and dolphins, to a teeming sea full of fish and sky full of birds here on the mainland. On the passage across the Sea of Cortez and on down the way to this broad and sandy anchorage at Punta de Mita, we’ve been given light and favorable wind that’s just enough to keep us gliding along comfortably.

We delayed our arrival on the mainland with a stop at the offshore Isla Isabel where hundreds of thousands of Frigate Birds, Blue Footed Boobies, Brown Boobies and Heerman’s Gulls nest on a rugged volcanic rock. The swirling swarm of birds there was overwhelming. The island was a nice transition. It had the rugged remoteness of Baja, with a little of the green of the mainland. (Check out Alma’s post on marine wildlife.)

Today was a rare rest day. A short trip ashore to dip in the surf, a couple of easy fixit projects around the boat here at anchor, some down time in a hammock on deck, in bunks reading and writing below.

An interesting thing about living and traveling on Debonair is the feeling of reassurance we get from the boat in these new and foreign places. In every new place, whether it’s comfortable or more challenging, we have this, our home, to work from, and as we get to know her better, that reassurance grows.

From Punta de Mita we’ll go into La Cruz and a marina to provision and work on some maintenance projects dockside. Then, the coming weeks will bring a handful of new anchorages on the way to Manzanillo. We’ll swim a lot now. The water has gotten warm so even the parents are swimming regularly (Arlo & Alma will swim in anything!). We’ll keep an eye out for new birds wherever we go.

South of the Tropic of Cancer!

We ate breakfast in the cockpit yesterday morning as we rounded Cabo San Lucas’ famous rock arches. After seeing only pangas and the odd tanker for a couple of weeks, we were struck by the hubub of sportfishing boats and other tour boats around us. We rounded the Cape, put our dishes in the sink and trimmed sails to beat the final 10 miles to San Jose del Cabo where we are tied up now. We’ve sailed about 850 miles since we left the US. The boat is as still as a house.

We were glad to have our friend JT aboard for much of the trip down the coast, and it was exciting that Alma and Arlo stood their first watches without us! We anchored in the beautiful Bahia San Quintin, Bahia Tortuga and Bahia Magdalena—in each place we got ashore to to stretch our legs and see the place after nights at sea. Here in San Jose, we were so glad to connect with a former owner of DEBONAIR who rebuilt her in the 90’s after she was hit by a barge. We also been taken out on the town by a former colleague of Jason’s whom we ran into on a few days ago on a beach in the remote Bahia Magdalena.

Arlo and Alma will likely each post over the next couple of days, but for now, I leave you with a few pictures from our voyage south along the coast of Baja California. We’re looking forward to heading to mainland Mexico in a couple days. Thank you all for your kind, funny, thoughtful, encouraging messages, here and by email.

Debonair anchored at Bahia Tortuga

Clamming at San Quintin. So many clams! An hour after this picture we swamped the dinghy in the surf, but saved all the clams for the pot.

A few of the dozens of clams we dug at San Quintin

A view of the Pacific from a hilltop at Bahia Magdalena

Jason’s working on the dinghy mast step here. We’ve repaired a lot of the things in the last couple weeks: the engine gear shift cable (underway), the catches for two cabinets and a drawer, the windvane steering hub mount (underway—Jason had the jigsaw and grinder going while we rolled down 7-8’ seas), the stove fiddles (thank you, JT!), and the dinghy oar leathers, among other things.

Arlo’s first fish, a bonito! So much better than the seagull he caught next on the line 🙁 I promise we won’t post pictures of every fish.

Walking the long way into town at Bahia Tortuga

Dawn outside Bahia Magdalena

Life on a Boat

–by ARLO

We moved onto Debonair four weeks ago, and we are starting to develop and settle into the new way of life. But it is still a world away from riding my bike in Alameda. One of the biggest differences from life in Alameda has been school. School on the boat is so different from ACLC. We only have one teacher and only do an hour or so of school a day, but our education is happening all the time. Our curriculum varies in every

A pod of bottlenose dolphins swimming under our bow

way from what is taught in ACLC in every class but math, in which we just follow along in our textbooks. We also learn some stuff that is not taught at ACLC, like oceanography, in which we see stuff from the text book in all parts of our life, from kelp beds to gray whale migration patterns, to being bullied by 4,500 pound bull elephant seals, and we get extra practice on subjects like Spanish, that we can go ashore and listen to and speak.

Another big difference is getting around. To go to the grocery store, we have to get in the dinghy, row ashore, either to a dock or to the beach, and if we land on the beach, we might have to make a surf landing. When there is a lot of surf on the beach, and you need to get ashore, you have to position the dinghy just right, and wait for the smallest wave that you can find, and then time it just right so that you surf in on the back of it. Once you hit the beach, you hop out into the ankle deep water and haul the dinghy up the beach, while waves break over you and go into the dinghy. You had better hope you put your phone in a dry bag. When you return from your trip to the store on foot, you have to launch the dinghy through the surf. You put the person rowing in the boat, and then the other people wait for a the smallest wave that you’ll get, and then push the dinghy out until you are knee deep, and then jump in, and yell at the person rowing to row like hell. We also have a two person inflatable kayak that we can use for smaller expeditions.

Once we return from shore, if we wanted to make lunch, we could either use the fresh food that we just picked up at the store, or use some of the five minivans full of non-perishable food that we jammed into every nook and cranny on the boat. For breakfast, we usually have cereal, either oatmeal or cold cereal. Dinner is the meal that is most like what it was at home. My mom will make something tasty, like soups, or pizza, and occasionally we will go out for dinner. All in all, the eating is much better than one might expect on a boat.

As for sleep on the boat, that is one of the few things that is pretty much the same. I have learned to like waking up at six in the morning, to the engine running, and hearing the boat leaving port, with my parents driving the boat up on deck, and then going back to sleep for another hour or two. When you finally do come up on deck in the morning in your pajamas, looking out at the coastline 5 or 10 miles away, with you bowl of cereal in your hand, you might sit around for a while, and then have to tend the main sheet, or rig a fishing line. This is all just part of life on the boat.

One of the only downsides of life on a boat as a kid is the lack of people your age. I haven’t talked to anyone under 35 in a month! But in the end, there are many more upsides than downsides, and living on a boat for a year is definitely worth it.

Dad and me at the end of an uphill hike on Santa Catalina Island

Sea Vegetables

From ALMA:

About a week and a half ago, we were in the Channel Islands. We were all rowing back from a hike on San Miguel Island when Arlo and I saw some seaweed float by. We collected it and decided to cook it. We have the book Sea Vegetables, which identifies lots of edibile seaweeds and ways to cook them. We used this book to identify the seaweed that we had collected! We identified it as Perennial Kelp, or the scientific name Macrocystis (Mac-row-sis-tus), and in California, it can grow up to 200 feet or more!

Arlo took the blades (leaves) and the floats and fried them. I took the floats and fried them. Then I stuffed them with cream cheese. It was all very good. My favorites were the fried blades and the stuffed floats. The leaves tasted like seaweed that you get at the store! We didn’t salt the seaweed at all, the saltiness came from the salt in the sea. I hope to cook more seaweed in the future!

Arlo’s seaweed peices ready to be fried!

Mexico!

We sailed into Mexico this morning in the dark. Lots of vessel traffic in these waters—fishing boats of various sizes, a cruise ship, merchant vessels, and naval ships—kept us watchful. Ashore, a string of yellow lights, which we presume marked a border fence, crept up the hill and followed the contours of several hills beyond as far as we could see. And then the sun rose over Mexican mountains and the breeze began to fill in. After 6 days in San Diego, it was good to be underway again!

Sailing (and reading) wing-and-wing in Southern California. The windvane is steering.

The seal weighs about 4,000 lbs more than the dinghy.

Some of our favorite spots so far have been in the Northern Channel Islands. At San Miguel Island we anchored in a cove with about 3,000 elephant seals declaring all sorts of things loudly all day and through the night. I appreciate our friend Glenn pointing out the humor of the scene as we rowed up

and down the least populated section of beach looking for some real estate to land on that hadn’t been claimed by an elephant seal bull. On one end of the beach we realize that the gap between bulls at the other end of the beach is just a little bit bigger. Once we row back to the other end, we are certain that the gap we’d just left behind offered a little more space. But when we look again, it seems very tight and we think about trying the other end again Somehow we do get ashore alive—through the surf and beyond the bull seals. Of course, following a hike, we return to find one of the seals has up and moved his 4,000 lb bulk directly between our path and the dinghy. I appreciate Arlo for pointing out the humor in this moment.

Other highlights of these three uninhabited islands: tiny anchorages, whales and dolphins, tide pools and more tide pools, and several types of kelp, which Arlo and Alma identify and cook in a variety of ways. On the downside, it turns out that California has a mylar balloon problem—over the course of about 120 miles we spotted 14 mylar balloons floating in the waters between Los Angeles, the Channel Islands and San Diego.

San Diego was a world away from the Channel Islands, but we felt right at home thanks to friends of friends who hosted us and lent us their car and generally supported our week of logistics.

Water, diesel, propane, laundry, groceries, marine hardware, a dodger repaired, new foam for our bunk, miscellaneous galley items, and, maybe most importantly, Jason’s first pair of flip flops in years.

Our Mexican courtesy flag and the Q flag fluttering beneath it still have creases from being stored for so long. Tomorrow we’ll head into Ensenada to check in with customs and immigration and the Port Captain, we’ll find an ATM, some showers and I’m sure, as it turns out that we arrived during the week-long Carnival celebration, some music and tacos.

We all loved reading your kind words on our first blog posts. Thank you! Do feel free to send any questions you have—large or small—our way. And we’ll keep you posted.

We’re off

Family and friends cast off our lines in Alameda on a Wednesday, as we hurriedly installed and stowed gear of every sort, and at the 13^th hour we were off!

Leaving the Golden Gate Bridge in our wake.

The twenty-foot seas outside the Golden Gate kept us in the Bay a few more days and we enjoyed the hospitality of friends at Hyde Street Pier, Angel Island and the Dolphin Club. And then, just under a week later, we sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, poured some rum into the water for Poseidon, and headed south to Half Moon Bay.

In the days that have followed, we’ve bashed through 12-foot seas under rainy skies, motored through calms, and sailed a glorious broad reach along the Point Sur coast, sometimes at 10 knots.

Arlo and Alma and friend Glenn have been excellent crew. And the seas and skies—in good weather and bad—have surrounded us with so much beauty. And so many birds!

Check out a few pix from our first days below: