Fish Stories

Warning -- if you don't want to read the details of killing a fish, you should skip this post!

As Jolanda mentioned in her post of today, we caught a fish on Friday while motoring up the coast.  I have to say that I'm really not an avid fisherman.  While we've been cruising, I will throw out a trolling line when we're on a long passage, as long as the conditions aren't too rough.  I have a fishing pole on board, but in five months I've not used it once.  So you can tell I'm not crazy about fishing, but it's something to do while on passage, and I do like to eat some wonderful freshly-caught fish!

Single-handling minus 1

Back on the San Francisco Bay Tod and I both single handled our own boats. That's how we met and noticed each other. Once we merged our lives, and sold Jolanda's boat and kept Tod's boat, we didn't single hand any longer. Until, Tessa joined our lives. While sailing with a baby is easy, as they still sleep a lot, and don't want all your attention, things change when it comes to the toddler age. This is the 'all about me stage' and once she is awake, she is happy, active and ready to play with us  So, when we do passages, it pretty much means that one of us is single handling the boat, and watch traffic and weather. The other person plays with Tessa.  We try to alternate those roles. Not such a big deal for day passages, but overnite passages are a different ball game. We get a few hrs of sleep during the night during off watch (if lucky and if the sea state isn't too bad), but then comes 7AM, and we are back in full activity parent mode, in addition to the boat watches. Fellow cruiser Windy of S/V Del Viento referred to this age as a "minus-one" crew, which I think is quite applicable, when it comes to boat handling.

Cruiser camaraderie

It may not be obvious from our blog posts just how many other cruisers are out here doing the same thing we are.  On the Pacific coast of Mexico, at this time of year, there are hundreds of cruising boats (mostly Americans or Canadians) having a wonderful time touring around.  Most of us fall into a few basic categories: 1) came down the California coast in the fall, and spending the winter season in Mexico before departing for the South Pacific in the spring; 2) brought the boat to Mexico some years ago, and spend the winter messing about here and there, until it gets too hot in May or June, then put the boat in storage some place until fall when they do it again!  Of course there are some exceptions -- like folks travelling down through Central America; proceeding through the Panama Canal to go to the Caribbean; or heading back uphill to California after a few months here in Mexico.

Swimming and cruising friends

When Tessa turned 2 yrs old we put her in an intensive swim/float program, called Infant Self Rescue.  For 6 weeks, she would swim 5 days a week for 10 minutes in a one-on-one swim/float session with the excellent IRS instructor Heather.  Tessa loved it, it was the first thing she mentioned in the morning.  At the end of the program she was in the pool fully clothed and with shoes, and was able to float for 5 minutes as well as swim to the other side of the pool.  It made us feel just a tad more comfortable knowing she could do this (and I say a tad, as we fully realized it would only give us a tiny bit more time if she ever were to fall in the water).  Then, sadly we didn't see a swimming pool for months, too busy with prep for this trip.  And it showed when we first started to swim again. Tessa loved going to the pool, but she didn't want to do any swimming or floating….

Well, that has changed since we are in Barra, and visiting the pool every day. Now we are back in the