“T” minus Seven

Common wisdom says that a sailor shall not plan passages on a schedule. And we won’t.

However, we did set ourselves a date when we hope to be ready to leave. And that date is 7 days away.

As I mentioned on an earlier post about the Puddle Jump, there is a finite time window to leave the West Coast of North America toward the South Pacific Isles, this window being defined by the weather. And, in order to take advantage of it, we need to be ready.

We will try to be ready within a week.

Does it mean we will depart within a week?

No. It may be one day after it. Or it may be weeks. Only the weather can tell.

As of now, we will focus on what we can control, and that is our to-do list. It still looks too long for comfort. However, the weather forecast isn’t showing a lot of winds around us for the following days, so we don’t have much of an opportunity to miss. Yet.

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This blog isn’t meant to be a diary – or at least I try not to.

However, this passage will be such an important milestone of our Journey that I think it warrants the exception.

Therefore, starting today I will post daily updates of where we are on the to-do list, how things are looking out there, etc, etc, and a few other things that come to mind.

And since we are trying to be ready by a certain date, I chose to name these posts as a countdown:

“T” minus Seven

Date: March 8th, 2016, 2100 Local Time/ 2300 EST / 0045 BRZ

Location: Barra de Navidad, MX (19:12N 104:41W)

Conditions: Started sunny, then cloudy and windy, and cleared off during the night

Highlights: Arrived yesterday late night after nearly a week away. It was somewhat of a long trip back – car, then airplane, then bus and then panga – so, we were off to a slow start today. Still then, it was productive. I did plumbing for most of the day. Adriana finished the annual report from the kids’ homeschooling, and then devoted the rest of her time organizing our onboard pharmacy. The kids had homeschool in the morning, and spent the rest of the day reading (they brought new books from this trip and started devouring them right away – no saving for the passage. Oh well). Oh, and both Paulo and I had haircuts !

Today we also agreed to dine out every day from now on to departure, and that will serve multiple purposes: (1) force us to get out of the boat for a few hours every day, (2) set a fixed time for us to stop working on the “projects”, (3) a good opportunity to sit and talk, without the usual distractions from home, (4) a great excuse to savor the excellent Mexican food before we leave and (5) it is now time to build our supplies, and not use them. Indeed, tonight we were discussing which milestones we would like to celebrate during the passage. We also realized we may most probably be still at sea during Paulo’s birthday, and that was news to him.

Tomorrow I have some errands to run (aka: chase parts and supplies) in Manzanillo and Cihuatlan, and on Thursday I get back into the engine room.

Mood Onboard: started a little hectic, with all the bags from the trip, and trying to catch up with the to-do list. But things got on track along the day and all is fine now.

Song of the Day: “Besame Mucho” – nothing special, just because an artist was singing it while we had dinner in town, and it stuck to mind. Besides, this is one of my favorite spanish-spoken songs (together with “Volver a Comenzar” from Cafe Tacuba).