It’s been a while since I went on an artist’s date, and today it was clear that I was due for one. The artist’s date is a creation of Julia Cameron, the author of The Artist’s Way, defined as a solo expedition to explore something that interests you. Officially they are meant to be weekly, but it seems like such a luxury to fit into my current life of homeschooling, meal planning/shopping/preparation, and boat work. The point of the artist’s date as I see it is to bank experiences to use as input for creativity, and to feed the soul such that you feel free to express creativity. I probably should do it more often.

At the roadside city name attraction

Letras Grandes

First I visited one of the colorful Ensenada signs made of huge letters. I parked across from the puestos selling all matter of edible goodies, and was immediately converged upon by people wanting to sell me things, and offer convenient services like picture-taking. Politely refusing their offers, I took in the view of the ocean and took the obligatory photo with the sign.

La Cuidad y Los Mercados

My next stop was a mercado, where I’d been planning to go for weeks, but I hadn’t been able to arrange a field trip yet.
This is partially because Ethan expressed a total lack of interest, and there are more important things to force him to do! It’s not easy to research local businesses in Ensenada, as very few have web pages.

Roads and sidewalks can be a hazard, and the bar neighborhood near the mercados was no exception

Plus, if I knew all about the destination, it would take some of the fun and surprise out of the visit. So, I picked two places called mercados that were close to each other on Google Maps. I knew I was close when the streets became full and parking was not to be found. So I drove 4 blocks away, and walked through what was apparently a neighborhood of bars before arriving at the first of the mercados, a set of shops selling mostly clothing, and hair cuts.

It wasn’t what I expected. I thought I’d see piles of mole and other sauce pastes, rows of spices, cases of meats, and crates of other goods. I kept walking until I found the second one, and then I realized it was actually a supermercado, much like the grocery stores in the US. Browsing the aisles I was impressed with the selection of fresh cheeses (queso panela and queso fresco as well as white sharp cheddar were my treasures from this trip) and how full the shelves were. I’d gotten used to seeing large holes in inventory due to supply chain issues.

Beautifully arranged grocery store aisle

La Cena

When I got home I needed to do a few things before I could continue my artist’s date, and allow my culinary creativity to surface: clear some kitchen countertop space, retrieve the rice maker, find the various dinner ingredients that I didn’t just purchase (in 6 different places), and put away the groceries I’d just bought. Putting away the groceries meant writing the contents and expiration dates on the top of the cans so we can find them and use them at the right time going forward. However, the Sharpie pens were not in their designated spot, so I had to tap into my super-secret stationery supply reserves. Pens, especially colorful ones, make me happy.

The culmination of my artist’s date, which was also our dinner

For the first time I made Mexican rice in the rice cooker. I heated up refried beans that come in a pouch (and taste way better than the kind in cans in the US), and cooked chicken with garlic and oregano. Queso fresco, cilantro and lime juice (from the small juicy Mexican limes) finished off the meal, and added more depth in color.

El Impacto

The date was over but it had the desired effect. It refilled my creative well enough that I was inspired to write another blog, and gave me new ideas about what else to explore, most likely on my own so I can dive in as deeply as I’d like and focus specifically on what interests me. It also helped remind me of the importance of having that time set aside occasionally. As a secondary benefit, doing something alone helps recharge my batteries overall, especially after spending time in close quarters with others.

I plan to research before my next outing to find a market like the one I was seeking, hopefully specializing in fruit and vegetables.

–  🍅 🌽 🌶 🥔 🥒 🍠 🥕 –

Answering the questions “Where do you live?”, “Where are you from?”, and “What’s your address?” used to be rather simple, but it’s actually quite complicated now given our nomadic lifestyle. When faced with one of these queries, we always pause, and usually refer to an app that stores our five current addresses. 

Five? Yes, unless you count the location of our home right now, which we don’t tend to give out except to pizza delivery places, then it would be six.

Sometimes I ask a question in response: “What are you going to use the address for?” Checking into a hotel in Orlando this week the response was that they just wanted to make sure the address on file was right. That didn’t tell me anything about their intended use, but since the room was already paid for and I don’t need any communication from hotel chains, I just left whatever they had stand.

Domicile Address

The mail center at our official address in Bushnell, Florida

This last week we officially moved to Bushnell Florida. That is the address on our driver’s licenses, where we are registered to vote, and where we will be filing our taxes. Since our residence (where we physically are) will be outside the United States, and we own no real estate tying us to a particular state, we set up a home base in Florida. This home base concept is called setting up domicile, and it is a legal construct used to determine things like where you vote, file lawsuits, pay taxes, claim benefits, and pay heed to governmental authority. 

We use the services of Escapees RV to process any mail that we receive there. They helped us understand what we needed to do to set up our domicile, since they are quite familiar with the needs of other nomadic families, those who travel by recreational vehicles. 

We expect to live in Florida when we are finished cruising, which may be 2-10 years from now. But in the meantime, we will maintain Florida as our home base, sign up for Boy Scouts in the state, and I’m already a member of the PMI Tampa Bay Chapter. I was disappointed to see that I had just missed their monthly meeting when we arrived last week. 

Mailing Address

James using the luggage cart as a skateboard in a hotel hallway

Our mailing address is now in Livingston Texas, another part of the service of Escapees RV. We use this for everything that doesn’t require our domicile address. When we need to register a mailing address for receiving any physical mail such as replacement credit cards, or mail that banks insist on sending even though we asked for digital-only communications, we use this address. That’s because the mail service will scan the envelopes, and the contents if requested, share that for us in their online interface, and forward those items that we request as well. So far we’ve never had a reason to forward anything.

It’s interesting to note that out of all the addresses that we have, this is the second most important and permanent one, yet we don’t necessarily have any plans to visit this location. 

Package & Letter Pickup

San Diego from the air, about to land

When we were originally looking into getting an address to use in the San Diego area, we signed up with the Traveling Mailbox organization, and their services seemed like a good idea, as they include scanning mail contents when we request it. However, after using this address for James’ work, we learned that they can’t actually accept packages and we wouldn’t be able to pick up mail at their San Diego address. This was my research oversight, and means that we ended up selecting the UPS Store as a secondary San Diego address, that turned into the primary one.

We’ve been receiving our Amazon deliveries for the past couple of months at a UPS Store. All forwarding of anything we want to handle physically is going to this address while we are close enough to collect it, so it’s the one we are using much of the time, especially if ordering anything to be delivered.

We keep the original Traveling Mailbox address since it’s just easier not to change the address for James’ work as it will change to Florida his last week on the job in November. 

Former Address, Hanging On

Emeryville Marina

Our address at Emeryville Marina was our only address for almost a year, and we’ve been trying to convert all communications away from it since we left in June. However, we weren’t able to do that entirely until the end of the months-long process to remove the leasing company from our car title. We received the title this week so this address should be going away entirely now.

Home Is Where Our Boat Is

View from our boat/home in Ensenada

We’ll be docked in Ensenada for the next couple of months, but don’t have much reason to provide an address for that location to anyone. If we’re connecting with fellow cruisers, we mention the marina name or meet elsewhere. There isn’t a point in having packages sent from the US here since the extra tax is significant, and we plan to leave soon so don’t want another address to change going forward.

Over the past year we completed many major projects, most of which we deemed essential before setting off on this cruising adventure. The last couple planned are the engine overhauls, and repair of the solar arch (perhaps a story for another time), which we plan to complete in Ensenada. Of course there will be new projects as we go along, but those complete the list to address while in a location that provides easy access to excellent skilled workers. 

As we travel south from Ensenada, we will stay at places with no address, forgo Amazon deliveries, and have much less of a connection to the country of our birth and citizenship. We’ve only dipped our toes so far into this Mexican landscape and culture, cuisine and history. We’re enjoying calling this place our home at this time, and we look forward to many months (or years?!) more in Mexico. 

Powerless

Drawing while listening to a US History audiobook, in the heat

We’ve been without AC (alternating current) power aboard since Saturday evening. It sounds a bit worse than it is, as we are only missing power to the induction stove, microwave, air conditioning and heating, clothes washer, power outlets, and horror of horrors, WiFi. We still have the DC (direct current) working though, which controls all the devices that we use more frequently, and would typically need when not connected to shore power. Those are things like the refrigerator and freezer, fans, toilets, water pumps, and USB plugs. That’s good news.

At first we thought the AC issue would be resolved quickly, so we planned to go out sailing in Bahia de Todos Santos the next day. The conditions were superb, and the sail was quite pleasant. We hardly thought of the power issue while we were out.

However, James’ later troubleshooting revealed confusing results and another day went by. We continued to request help from the marina to rule out their power supply, and for 3 days there was one issue after another preventing them from helping with the troubleshooting. Twice I caught a dock worker and roped him into a conversation about it, but all he could do was call for the experts who were already gone for the day.

The One Thing

Cables strewn inside and out

I wasn’t able to cook, as our induction stove, instant pot, and convection oven all run on AC. Having to eat at restaurants all the time isn’t all bad though. We considered using our solar oven for cooking breakfast yesterday, but the clouds changed our plans. Then we realized that we could string an extension cord to the power tower and at least have access to one AC-powered item at a time. WiFi was first on the list. Our conversations often included things like, “No, we don’t have WiFi now since the blender is the One Thing”, “Use the WiFi while you can – it’s now the One Thing”, and “I’m going to make the Instant Pot the One Thing for about 35 minutes.”

It worked out okay like that for a while, until we found a power strip, tripling our AC power access, and tripping us when we tried to move about. Adding to that mess, with each power solution we tested the boat’s horizontal surfaces collected more and more tools and parts, while cupboards and cushions were dislodged, as if the inside were hit by a storm.

Hurricane Kay

Hurricane Kay is impacting land as I write, at the bottom of Baja California, and is expected to travel north along the coast losing momentum and dissipating to become a tropical storm when it arrives in Ensenada. The impact here will only be some stronger winds and rain. Since the area isn’t used to getting much rain, floods are expected.

Preparing for this, I took a mental inventory of our food/meal situation. We have months of food aboard so that isn’t an issue, but cooking it could be if the marina’s power is impacted by the storm. Usually that wouldn’t be the case, but we shouldn’t expect to have use of the One Thing (or Triple Thing) during or immediately after the storm. This reduces us to BBQ and solar oven as cooking options that are not ideal since they are both outside, or using the propane oven which will heat up our living space. So, we plan on eating salads and charcuterie for the next few days!

Though Kay will be a tropical storm when she arrives, she won’t be packing more of a punch than the typical squalls in the Caribbean. Our boat is built to withstand much more severe weather, so we have no concerns about weathering the coming storm.

Our friend Peter Monkhouse joined us aboard as crew for our voyage from San Diego to Ensenada. His blog contribution is below.

I am sitting in the cockpit of Erin Skye as I type this blog on the last day of my visit with my good friends Deanna and James and their son Ethan. Deanna and Ethan are off doing home school. James is working on wiring the underwater lights and I have just finished washing and putting away the dishes.

Getting to San Diego

Tacking in Bahia de Todos Santos

Before I go further, let me go back. I met Deanna over 15 years ago when we served on a Project Management Institute (PMI) committee. We then served on the PMI Board for six years together, and eight years on the board of Project Managers Without Borders (PMWB). While on the PMWB Board, I travelled to Denver and stayed with Deanna and her family in Denver a couple of times.

About 4 or 5 years ago, Deanna shared with me her retirement dream of buying a catamaran and sailing around the world. She shared the link to the World ARC for cruising around the world. Having sailed dinghies in my youth and occasionally in recent years, I was interested in Deanna’s adventure and joining her and James during the journey.

PMWB Board of Directors

In May, we settled on me traveling to San Diego for the voyage to Ensenada on August 30^th. With this set, I booked my plane ticket, changeable at no charge, to travel from Toronto to San Diego on August 26^th and return on September 3^rd. As Deanna mentioned, when you are trying to meet a boat, you can pick the location or the date, not both, and this statement could not have been truer. Deanna and James made it to San Diego a week earlier than planned, and they had challenges finding a mooring for Erin Skye. The result was they wanted to leave for the passage to Ensenada 4 days earlier. I changed my ticket to Wednesday, August 24^th. (Sorry for the interruption, the diver from the marina just arrived to clean the bottom of Erin Skye.)

A week or so before I left, Deanna gave me a list of what to bring. The list was very helpful and required a shopping trip to get things like deck shoes (not used due to nice weather). I packed as little as possible while ensuring there was flexibility in clothing options for differences in weather. A washing machine had recently been installed on Erin Skye, which made packing a little easier.

Meeting Erin Skye

Deanna picked me up at the San Diego airport in the morning, and I was immediately set to work helping with errands before going to the Police Dock in San Diego to meet Erin Skye. Upon arrival, there was a quick lunch, and then we went motoring out of the harbour to check the auto-pilot system that James had just installed. It was wonderful to be out in the ocean! But I had a lot to learn!

Guest quarters, starboard aft

Having been involved in the journey, I had seen and studied the layout of Erin Skye. I knew it was a good sized boat, much larger than any other sailboat I had been on. But seeing her in 3D is very different. As I weaved my way to my berth, starboard aft, I realized my physical flexibility was going to get a workout. My bed, which was very comfortable, was the width of the hull, so the entry and exit from the bed was from the foot. I am tall, over 6’, and I had to do a little jump to get on the bed. The nice thing about Erin Skye was each berth had a head with a shower, a small shower. More flexibility is required.

The next challenge was to find out where everything was. It is amazing to see how many storage spaces there are. And if there is no home for it yet, it goes to the starboard forward berth! As the days went on, I learnt where things were and even how to find items in starboard forward.

Next, I had to be trained on the basics of the boat, how to operate the toilet, use the shower, and watch the use of power and water. When in a marina, the power and water are not as much of an issue, but Erin Skye has processes that need to be followed. For example, as James said, if it does not go through you, it does not go in the toilet. This led to some interesting discussions, which made me realize that you only want to go sailing with very good friends you have known for a while.

James and Peter swabbing the deck

The final thing I had to learn was the systems. Deanna and James have been living onboard full-time for a year and sailing it for longer. I had to figure out how to fit into their way of doing things. Some things were pretty straightforward; for example, in the morning, Deanna and James go for a walk first thing when they get up while docked. So do I when I am at home. Other things, well, let me say, I had to be corrected or put in my place. After all, I was here for ten days, and they will have to continue their journey.

Getting to Mexico

At the helm during the passage

The passage from San Diego to Ensenada was very uneventful. It was the “no” trip: no one went overboard, no injuries, no sea sickness, no whales, no dolphins, no fish, no waves, and no wind. We ended up motoring down, with the current in about 10.5 hours. It was such a wonderful experience to be out in the ocean. A few days after arriving in Ensenada we did go out for a 3 hour sail when there was some wind. The remainder of my time was spent enjoying Erin Skye in the Marina Coral and visiting Ensenada, including having delicious fish tacos.

Famous and delicious fish tacos at La Guerrerense

As I sign off, I would like to thank Deanna, James, and Ethan for letting me spend time with them. I celebrated Ethan’s 15^th birthday with him and James and Deanna’s wedding anniversary. We had many laughs. I learned some new games. And, I got a window into the life on Erin Skye. But most importantly, I am so lucky to have such great friends, a friendship that has only grown in the past week.

Now, it’s time for me to check the ice maker and bring in the laundry drying on the lifelines.

Peter

The whole crew at a celebration dinner at the newly opened Pranvera

During our last week of crazy busy cruising preparation, our walking friend Anna shared with us that there was a planetary alignment we could view at 4:30 each morning through our departure date. I woke up early two mornings in a row to view the sight alone, barefoot on the deck that was wet with condensation. I let the teens aboard know of the event and they were happy to join me to witness the moon aligning with the planets on the best viewing day, June 24th, but were soon back in their cabins again slumbering. It was clear that the “stars” were aligning for our departure.

We Say Goodbye to Friends

We shared bagels and connections with friends who stopped by to bid us farewell at our marina the next day. It was fantastic to see everyone and share information about our new lifestyle as well as to connect another time. Ethan’s girlfriend Grace was already in crew mode, fitting right into the routine we were just building, as she had years of cruising experience before joining us for the month.

I was at the helm as we left the dock for the last time in Emeryville, as friends watched and cheered. Our broker and friend Wayne was our fifth crew member on this leg of the journey. He shared the wisdom of his years of experience related to the local conditions, what to expect from other boats (I am prone to assume they can never be trusted), and how to use our radar in foggy and gray conditions.

. .

We Motor Against the Current & Wind

Our trip out the San Francisco Bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge was slower than planned due to a miscalculation relating to the current timing. Usually the wind along the California coast is from the northwest, which would mean that we could bring out the sails to go south, but today it was from the southwest so we motored down the whole way. That was the case the last time we went to Half Moon Bay as well, so we weren’t too surprised.

Wildlife Sends Regards

We jumped up to photograph whales at least four times, one of which included over 10 minutes of rolling backs, flukes, and sprays from about 3 whales in close proximity. We slowed down to observe longer, but were still faster than them at 4 knots.

Several dolphins graced us with their presence, a large shark (we never saw its back but its fin was huge above the water) swam erratically nearby, and when we arrived at Half Moon Bay we saw and heard sea lions, and saw and smelled pelicans.

We Anchor with Ease

Using the remote control, I lowered the anchor and chain watching the new colored length indicators that Ethan and Grace installed a couple days before. James set the anchor then Ethan attached the bridle to take the load off the windlass, the machine that raises and lowers the anchor. Grace gave us high marks for our first anchoring as cruisers and we packed into the dinghy to go to shore to meet up with Wayne’s wife Harriet.

I Drop My Phone in the Ocean

Soon after stepping onto the dinghy dock, I accidentally dropped my phone into the water next to the dingy. I yelled, “Noooo!” and was awash with emotion as my camera, encyclopedia, family tracker, friend-connector, phone, and constant companion dropped out of sight.

We talked to the harbormaster and store employees nearby but none knew anyone who could dive down to search for the phone. Harriet suggested one of us go in after it, but we didn’t have a mask that would allow us to see to identify it, especially down ten feet. Then Wayne realized he knew the owner of a store there, called him, and he recommended a local diver. It took a bit of convincing, but Wayne was able to get the diver to go back to work Saturday night after an exhausting day. An hour after the phone sunk, it was recovered and still worked! I rinsed it off with fresh water and we finally were able to enjoy our seafood dinner at Ketch Joanne.

I Thank My Lucky Stars

One of my favorite quotes is from Thomas Jefferson: “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” Taking this to heart, I plan to research methods to connect my phone to my body to prevent a repeat performance that may not have such a happy ending.

As I put my head on my pillow amid the cacophony of sea lion barking and fog horn notes in Half Moon Bay, I reflect on the day. I expect that our first day as cruisers was a good representation of things to come: lots of highs, a few lows, and ending each day on a high note after much work and more time spent than expected on seemingly simple things.