Where did December go?

January 9, 2017

We are already falling for the mañana attitude that Mexico provides. The part will be here tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’ll get on that. We’ll go see that tomorrow. Tomorrow, you can go do that. December was a constant string of tomorrows controlling our plans. It was a month of boat cleaning, fixing, and improving. After our anchor windlass stopped working back in Bahia Tortugas, I’ve had to hand haul our anchor up each time we needed to move or reposition the boat. A literal pain in the back each time. Luckily, a friend was driving down to Cabo and offered to bring us a new set up. Little did he know, bringing a new windlass, anchor, and chain rode was going to be a heavy experience, over 600 lbs to be exact. I will be forever grateful and in his debt as it arrived one day early and in perfect condition. That doesn’t happen in Mexico. It took a few days to sort it out and as usual, one project opens two more. The electrical wires I had installed back in California foreseeing this upgrade, were a few sizes too small. As luck would have it another close friend was on his way down for a family vacation and offered to bring anything we needed in the extra suitcase he had. He didn’t realize that fifty feet of 2/0 marine tinned copper wire was that heavy. Add in a box of lugs, some Christmas gifts for the kids, and some can’t live without food items, and the suitcase was too small. It took a few hours over a few days, between swims at the pool and trips to town, to remove and replace the windlass. That was the easy part. Upon getting ready to install the anchor, I thought it felt light when picking it up. Amazon messed up and sent the wrong size, too small. Too big would have been ok, but too small defeated the purpose of us replacing it. I wanted to sleep well at night knowing our ground tackle was holding fast and keeping our floating house right where we parked it. After making a few calls and refusing to drive 800 miles each way to San Diego to have Amazon pick it up, I just ordered the correct size from a different store and had a friend pick it up and drop it off at a Mexican shipping logistics company. For a mere 30% of its value, it only took 2 weeks to get it down here, luckily before Christmas because if it was late by a day, it would have been late by 10 days as everyone here closes down for the holidays. As I should have already known, there was one more wrinkle in my anchor plans. I had to redesign the roller on the bowsprit to accept the bigger anchor. I drew up a plan for some stainless welding and luckily had an offer to have anything I needed put on a private jet in Bend and delivered to La Paz 2 days after Christmas. Some text messages were exchanged with another friend in Bend along with a few photos of my drawings and the next thing I know, the part arrived. The 2 cases of Deschutes Brewery IPAs I specified on the technical drawings also arrived, just in time for New Years Eve celebrations as well. As I sat and reflected on the past year and how we got our boat here, the constants were the words “Friends & Luck” and the variables were just the names of different people I’m lucky to call friends. (You can take the math teacher out of the classroom, but math is everywhere!) Thanks Ben, Scott, Jack, Christy, Hayden & Kristen, Jeff & Lisa, and Victor. You all made our December a great one! We couldn’t be here enjoying the beauty of Mexico on our floating home without you. My back would like to thank you as well. Cheers!