4/3/17 We’re an hour away from beginning our journey to French Polynesia. Poised at the tip of Baja, after several days of beautiful sailing and one long day of motoring, punctuated by a quick and very bouncy stop for kite boarding, we’re finally ready to set sail for the longest journey of our lifetime.
The provisioning has been its own journey: a cruiser’s version of work. For five days anchored in La Paz harbor, our boat waltzed back and forth with the tide while Anson edited video and downloaded podcasts, and Devon, Mark and I procured everything we need for this passage. The shopping, although tiring, was the easy part. The work began as we transferred boxes and bags into the dinghy, raced our inflatable across short, steep chop raised by wind against current, handed bags aboard while wavelets splashed and lifted us up and then down Anthea’s side, quickly unlocked the cabin and opened the fridge to make room for the precious perishables, deftly transferred boxes of food from their potentially bug infested wrappings into zip lock bags, and tossed the trash into the dinghy for the next run to shore. The hard work came next: with all floor and seat space covered with bags of food, we had to find a meaningful home for each item. Heavy items stored as centered and deep in the boat as possible to keep the boat balanced, items which spoil when wet placed in the limited space outside of the bilge, fragile items delicately buttressed in shallow spots to prevent crushing.

Open any cupboard, floor board or seat on board and you’ll find a surprise. Thirty-six eggs under the port seat, really? Look hard and you’ll find another four dozen secreted aboard. Knowing that we’ll forget these fancy hidey holes, we’ve mapped each storage space and created an inventory.

With bilges bursting with cans, we set sail on a northerly wind towards Cabo San Lucas. Our first night we anchored off La Ventana, letting Anson try out his kiteboarding skills in winds too fierce for Devon. Hopefully he’ll give you an update on that. We hopped down the coast to arrive in Cabo where we’ve refueled and are poised to set sail. I’ll check the weather now, and if still favorable, we’ll depart in an hour.

One big shout out to our “shore crew”: Louise and Peter (Kim’s parents). They’ve navigated our financial life ashore – from taxes to bill paying and alerts on debit card fraud. They’re also our weather team and logistical crew, graciously staying in town to send daily updates to us for weather routing until landfall. Mucho gracias!