Sidewalks.

I've learned with time and experience to ALWAYS pay extra attention to what I'm doing, or more specifically where I am going and how I put my foot down in the city of La Paz.

The sidewalks are insane. To repeat a famous and over done cliché "You never know what you're gonna get!" Sudden holes, drops of over 5 feet to the street, cracks, change of levels or amazingly beautiful tiles. The sidewalks of La Paz have everything to offer to amaze you or have you tripping over yourself!

The majority of these pics were taken in 2 days. Not that we had to walk all over town to find the best shots, they are all over the place. Just 2 days of running to the market and doing our errands...

The Perfect Storm - La tempesta perfecta

This is an artist's rendering of what happened. Notice the clothes in the front window?

They say when you go South down the Baja it's downhill, but heading northbound is like going uphill. The current, the wind and mankind's basic natural instinct all take you towards the South and warmer climates!

Going North? You've got a headwind and find yourself slamming against the current. Waves hit the front of your boat nonstop - this is what they call the Baja Bash! 

Leave it to US to go uphill even if we're headed South. It's now our own little inside joke that if we want the wind to change direction all we need to do is go sailing with it on our side, it won't be long before it changes direction!

Our boat holds 55 gallons of diesel, plus we always carry two 5-gallon fuel jugs just in case... Diesel fuel goes a long way in a sailboat when the sail's natural fuel is on your side!

Almost halfway between San Diego and Cabo San Lucas is Cedros Island. The Northern crossing to Cedros is Baja's own little Bermuda triangle. If anything is to go wrong on the Baja journey - THAT is where you can expect it to happen. And happen it did, indeed! But that's not all that happened in this portion...

• Broken fan belt... check!

• 30-mile hour winds... check!

• In our faces of course... check!

• Waves over 6 feet high... check!

• Hitting us from all sides... check!

• Fuel: empty... check!

• Vomit... of course!

At one point, I'm down below lying on the bed trying to control my fears (yes, fearS as in multiple amount of fears) and suddenly the Captain decides to jib or tack or whatever its called and turns into the wind, or tries to do some kind of a turn and Mr Thirty-Mile-An-Hour-Wind is pissed off at us for our utter lack of respect. The boat tilts. A lot. Like "wholly-fuck-my-cabinets-are-throwing-all-my-clothes-out" kinda tilt. 

Yeah. I was in the middle of a scene taken directly out of a horror movie when some unknown and invisible beast decides to throw all contents from the interior cabinets into the air to freak the occupants way the fuck out! Lying on the bed I suddenly found myself kinda standing upright. I immediately grabbed my iPod and turned on my funky little level app to see what kind of angle our jangle was taking. The iPod was slammed against the ceiling in a "landscape" format and suddenly it changed its degree to "portrait". That's how far we were leaning. And this was after the mega tilt! 


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Editor's note: In case you, the reader, don't know what I'm talking about, it's when the apparatus believes you want to look at it upright rather than on its side. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about!

And then, the Captain announces he needs me up above to help him reef the sail so less of it is exposed to the elements from hell. I avoided looking at the waves at all cost. This was some serious freaky scary shit man! Once we secured the sail, we climbed back down. Soaking wet the only thing we wanted to do was make our way towards the toilets. Some serious deposits were needed pronto!

Are you jealous of me now?

Seal of Approval!

This was such a COOL island! We anchored and spent the night. This happened on day 2. Squeaky was getting more and more acclimated to us. Imagine if we'd spent a week there! He'd be sleeping in bed with us...

Smoke On The Water

Not Us! But... thankfully the flames stayed away!

After 2 glorious days at Isla Los Islotes diving, playing and interacting with the seals we reluctantly headed back towards town. It was a must - we were living in an out-house (out of tortillas, out of meat and almost out of Capt Morgan).

2 hours of motoring later (because, of course once again the winds were working against us) the motor started spinning madly out of control. And the smoke! Oh, the smoke coming out from under the boat! Lucky for us, the Captain was an engine builder. His instinct was immediate as he quickly turned the key and ordered me to pull on the kill engine plug.

Unluckily for us, that was useless. The smoke was increasing. The motor's screams were blaring and it sounded like something was going to blow. Or as we say in racing "the thing kicked a rod" We did not want THAT to happen.

He pulled off the cover to unveil even more screams since the walls were no longer acting as muffler to the motor's complaints. Everything he pulled, shoved, and attempted had zero results. It kept screaming and spinning wildly out of control. And the smoke! Have I mentioned the smoke?

I was getting constant commands "Keep an eye out for rocks and other boats!" as we were drifting out of control and "Pull the kill engine switch again!"

Then the light came on and he remembered on old Volkswagen he once owned that needed to be stalled. The situation was very reminiscent of this one. Only problem is - how do you stall a boat without jumping underneath it to stop the prop without it chopping your head off? Or worse yet, your johnson? He grabbed a rag and shoved it in the air intake, and finally part of the nightmare was over. SIlence. Smoke and nasty burned motor smell, but silence.

He dumped quarts and quarts of oil in the motor and it fired up. Normally. But that thing puked up so much oil as it was trying to destroy itself and it all ended up in our bilge pump on the verge of being pumped out in the sea. I had images of my beloved Squeaky (our adopted seal pup) and could not let that happened.

I scavenged the boat for any empty container I could find (sacrificed myself in finishing off whatever was nearly empty: orange juice, water, wine I drank everything and anything!) and filled every container I had. I gathered as much as 3 gallons of oil mixed with diesel mixed with water! Some traces were left, but very little oil remained.

Squeaky can live happily ever after...

Slideshow!

Please enjoy this first batch of pictures! We'll be updating and adding pictures, movies, stories, even recipes (why not?)

Life's Too Short

Way too short to live it miserably watching the days drip away like a leaky faucet wasting valuable resources. We're still young (kind of) and full of energy (on most days) and have some cash stored away (for now) so the timing was right!

We stored what little stuff we had left (in a used old trailer parked at our buddy's house) and battened our hatches (whatever that means) and sailed away to Mexico. We have no idea how long we'll be gone, how far we'll go or what exactly it is we're looking for. But so far - one month in - and it's been pretty spectacular!

Please do follow us and our journeys!