We’re back on the boat! It’s been a long 4+ months away from Midnight Blue – traveling to see family and spending months working on our property on St John in the Virgin Islands. Our first stop was to fly down to Puerto Vallarta/Punta Mita, Mexico to visit our friends and meet their new baby; it was a wonderful homecoming! Then up to New York for Jane’s family reunion on Long Island… fun times at the beach with my nieces who both got good at jumping the waves – we couldn’t get them out of the ocean! At the end of the trip we went for a sail on the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater out of New York City – what a treat to get back on the historic ship that I grew up sailing on the river.
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| Tim and I with my nieces, mom, aunt & uncle, sailing on the Clearwater in NY Harbor |
After months on St John, my next stop was back up to New York to play general contractor. My mom has been talking about remodeling her kitchen for over 10 years (Tim helped her plan it out during his first time meeting her in NY back in the year 2000!). Finally, she made the leap and ordered the cabinets and bits and pieces and hired a contractor to do the job. I went up to help her get the kitchen prepared (cleared out) and to oversee the contractors. Things went fairly smoothly, but as always there were unexpected expenses and it was a very busy week! Here are the before and after photos.
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| Before... |
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| After! |
Tim left St John and headed to Florida for a quick visit with his sisters then we met in San Diego en route back to the boat. After visiting a friend and picking up some boat parts, we headed south – Tim’s friend gave us a ride to the border and we walked across the border into Tijuana, Mexico. After wandering around a bit, we found the ‘ABC’ bus to Ensenada and an hour or so later we were back on the boat!
Reentry to the cruising life and Mexico has been fairly painless. We’ve never returned to find the boat so filthy, and still can’t get over how dirty it is here. There is constant dust and smog and dirt covering the boat – you wash it one day and it’s filthy again the next. Our lines and wire rigging are caked in dirt. That plus the fact that it’s hard to access the surf around here without a car are driving us to get out of here sooner rather than later. But meantime, we’ve enjoyed excellent tacos (especially some yummy fish tacos) and I’ve gotten to do some fun Latinoamerican Zumba classes. And it’s an interesting town to poke around – the local farmer/flea market is quite an experience. Several blocks filled with stalls all piled with clothing and other household stuff – like hundreds of yard sales all in one spot. The produce stands are filled with tons of local produce – they grow quite a lot in the valleys surrounding this area.
Lucky for us our friends Robin and Kenny on Pionero had to go up to San Diego to pickup some boat equipment, so they were able to pick up some engine parts and a new stereo for us. We hauled the boat out of the water this week to paint the bottom, so now we just need to provision and do a few more boat projects then we’ll be off. Oh, and of course, we can’t leave until we go up to the wine country just outside of Ensenada with a bunch of friends from a few other boats this weekend (I’m really looking forward to that!). We’ll be watching the weather to make sure there are no late season hurricanes and plan to stop at various anchorages along the Baja Peninsula on our way back to Punta Mita. Most likely we’ll be back to Punta Mita in late November. More to come when we get ready to head out... now that we’re back on the boat I’ll be a better blogger!
