Many of you have asked what it’s like living aboard a boat…what do you do all day…that kind of stuff. Actually, that’s not entirely true. As a matter of fact, no one has asked that. Frankly, it’s like Nancy and I are dead and buried. No one emails and no one ever calls (so much so that we recently disconnected our cell phone). But for the sake of this blog, let’s pretend that lots of folks are curious what our days are like. To that end, I’ve categorized our days into two main categories: Sailing and Not Sailing. Please humor me and read on.

NOT SAILING DAYS:

Boat Maintenance Days: These days are fairly common among people who live on boats and travel via the water (note: I’m hesitant to call any of us sailors, as historically sailors have not been the brightest bunch and I would prefer not to be categorized as such. 400 years ago it was acceptable that 80% of them would perish while trying to purchase pepper…remember the spice islands thingy?)Anyway, I digress. On a BMD, we usually get up fairly early (7am or earlier!) to try to avoid working in the intense sun and heat that shows up around 2pm. Typical tasks include recaulking the teak decks on Oblivion, sanding and varnishing (brightwork), engine oil and filter changes, cleaning, inspections, bottom cleaning, fueling (usually accomplished 5 gallons at a time), stainless polishing, etc. BMD’s wouldn’t be too bad if we had everything onboard that we need. But we don’t, so often a BMD gets mixed up with a shopping day…

Shopping Days-there are two specific types of shopping days. The first is what we call grocery shopping. Other people who live on boats and travel by water call if ‘provisioning’. It’s a big word on the docks. If you happen to be a sailor reading this blog, ‘provisioning’ means grocery shopping. (for the rest of you, sailors aren’t too bright and I need to make things somewhat clear). Grocery Shopping Days happen when we’re out of food. If you’re living stateside and reading this, you generally just pull into Rainbow Foods or Hy Vee, throw anything you could possibly want into your grocery cart, whip out your credit card, have them put it into your trunk, and buzz home. Things aren’t usually quite so simple here in Mexico. Although there are comparable grocery stores here in Mexico, they are few and far in between. So we begin a GSD by making a complete list of everything that we could possibly need. Once the list is in hand, we walk 1 to 3 miles to the bus stop where we then get on a bus and head in the general direction of the store. (there are often bus transfers which complicate things some more). Once at the store, we purchase MOST of the things on our list. Things that do not get purchased at the Big Store are things like water, beer, ice, and produce that you expect to eat in a day or two. More on those items later. (BTW, you cannot buy orange cheeses in Mexico. Tim Ewald: The Orange Death IS real. Don’t let anyone tell you differently)

After hitting the Big Store, if you don’t have too much to carry you repeat the bus thingy. More likely, though, you catch a cab for $5 back to the marina so you can get in your dinghy and get back to the boat. By now, you’ve spend 4-6 hours buying 80% of your groceries. The rest of the things on your list you can generally get within a few blocks of the marina: Limes, beer, ice, water, fresh produce, etc. But there is ZERO chance that any single tienda/mini super will have everything you need, so you’ll end up visiting 4 or 5 stores for the last items on your list. Finally, upon returning to the boat, you will spend an hour putting everything away: our refrigerator is a top load type, so you end up having to take everything out to re-load it…a GSD is a full day for 2 people. By the way, you end up buying produce at two different places because the produce at the Big Store isn’t ripe enough to eat and will need to soften a few days while the stuff at the local tiendas is ready to go immediately.

Boat Shopping Days: These are the worst days that there are. Period. Not to make light of death row inmates, but I suspect they are in a better mood on E day than I am on BSD’s.At least they know how the day will end. They suck. Plain and simple. Here’s a look-in at a typical BSD that I actually had a couple of months ago. This is happened.

I always have a list of ‘fantasy’ items that I need for Oblivion. Things like engine oil, varnish, teak deck plugs, etc. (basic things that simply don’t exist) I’d also been having some problems with our primary Racor fuel filter and had decided that my project for the day would be to re-plumb it. I needed a couple of bronze fittings and some fuel hose. Without further adieu:

8:30-walk to local Chandelry, (like they’d have anything of use)then to bus stop in La Cruz
9:00-Catch bus to Puerto Vallarta (where Zaragoza Marine is)
9:50-Get off at Walmart and walk back 1 mile to Zaragoza
10:15-enter Z with my list. Seek help.
11:00-Leave Zaragoza, walk 1 mile to bus stop
11:30-get on bus for La Cruz
12:30-arrive in La Cruz
12:45-arrive on Oblivion
1:00-begin project which should take 45 minutes
1:01-realize Zaragoza sold me the right size fuel line and the wrong size bronze fittings.
1:02-fit of rage, smash hand into boat wall. Maybe break hand.
1:03-begin walk to bus stop
1:20-catch bus to PV, Walmart, Zaragoza Marine
2:45-arrive at Z, return parts. Get new parts.
2:50-spot Delo brand diesel oil! Unfortunately, it’s in 5 gallon buckets. Purchase and leave. Begin walk 1 mile to bus stop with 40# pail of oil.
3:05-this is bullshit. I’m paying for a cab. I don’t care if it’s across a Mexican state line and that it costs $40. I can’t carry this friggin’ oil any more. Stop 2 cabs who refuse to take me across state line.
3:15-stop at tienda for 2 Gatorades. Drain them at the counter, pick up my oil, and leave.
3:20-1st La Cruz bus refuses to let me on with pail of oil.
3:30-2nd La Cruz bus refuses, also.
3:45-100 Peso bribe gets me headed home
5:00-walk back to marina and Oblivion
5:40-finish project, finally.

So BMD’s aren’t usually too great.

Leisure Days- We actually DO have some of these, although probably not as many as you’d think. There are two distinct types of LD’s…

Beach Days These days are a piece of cake. Grab a book, your swimsuit, and a towel and head for either a local (walking distance) or a nearby (bus ride included) beach. We’re usually at the beach by late morning and hang out until 5ish, drinking cheap beers and eating guacamole and salsa.

Tourist DaysOn a tourist day we catch either a local bus or an over-the-road bus and visit a nearby city. We commonly stay in a cheap hotel and spend the day walking around looking at old churches and poking our heads into trinket shops. We do everything expected of a tourist: museums, street food, tours, etc. We’ve had a total of approximately 20 total Leisure Days (BD and TD’s) so far out of 160 days. Not bad, eh?

Sailing Days:

There are two specific categories of these days. Daysailing and, for lack of a better word, passages.

Daysailing: When our next destination is no more than 10-12 hours away and we can easily reach it by sunset, we’re shitting in tall cotton. These usually begin 3 or 4 days earlier with me asking Nancy what time she’s like to go. She consults the weather and her tarot cards and we decide that we’re not in a particular hurry and should have no problem getting there by sunset, so let’s leave mid-morning. Around 8am, I’m itching to go. Nancy’s sitting around eating yogurt or some kind of health food and giving me the evil eye…then she says something like, “It’s not 10 am yet, dumbass”. We compromise and raise anchor at 8:15. (thanks for that ‘promptness’, Dad!) If the weather’s nice and our makeshift autopilot is working, we can read a book or play Trivial Pursuit on the Ipod. More often than not we take our turns at the helm, in 2 hour shifts, until we arrive and drop anchor. At that point, it’s often a rush to see how fast we can get the dinghy in the water and visit this faraway land that we’ve just arrived at. Also, it’s fair to note, we’ve probably surveyed several new problems with Oblivion and will subsequently need to schedule another BMD and BSD. Great. Sometimes we choose to do these short trips at night because the skies are so beautiful and it’s often windier at night…

Passage DaysThese, while really not ‘passages’, involve at least one day and one night of sailing. They don’t vary much, as our longest is like 3 days. They almost always involve puking.

In order to avoid starvation on such a journey, we typically have to spend at least 2 Grocery Shopping Days immediately prior to a PD. (as a rule, you never want to leave a dock/anchorage with less than a 200 day supply of food, water, and booze. Ask any sailor) Once we’ve stocked up on food, we check weather and plot our course on our chartplotter. Lately, our autopilot has been working alright, so the helmsman job typically turns out to be more of just keeping an eye on things (engine gauges if we’re motoring, boat traffic, radar, etc.) Nancy usually listens to her Ipod (This American Life) and I fiddle with the chartplotter to see what else it can do. We also spend a ton of time staring at the stars at night on the ocean…they’re amazing…FYI: when you see the Southern Cross for the first time,For the first time You understand now Why you came this way ‘Cause the truth you might be runnin’ from Is so small. But it’s as big as the promise The promise of a comin’ day. About 15 minutes ahead of the shift change you need to wake up your replacement…usually their light is on and this is unnecessary. Shove some more seasickness med in your head, and catch some sleep.

Well, that’s about it folks. Pretty simple life, really.

Jeff