And now it’s time to leave
This week we finally got to sail on a different boat. Our little community of liveaboards has been wanting to see how other boats sail and also as an excuse for a fun day out on the water.
Trey, Taylor’s friend’s-college-friend’s-roommate’s-boyfriend lives on Space Cowboy, a beautiful Catalina 34. He is a much more experienced sailor than the rest of us and it was great. We learned a LOT about sailing and were enthralled with sailing on a traditionally rigged boat. Their 34-foot boat carries about the same sail area as Scooter, but theirs is evenly divided between the headsail and mainsail
Their mainsail also makes a much better hammock than ours.
Scooter is 80% mainsail (see last photo) so we don’t worry much about our headsail trim. The night started instructively with a few photo ops but ended up with games and revelry and pizza back at the docks.
This week we also celebrated Saint Paddy’s day at a dive bar (sailing themed of course) with our small Sailing community. Grant and Claire, our dock neighbors, and Trey and Soleil, Space Coyboy’s crew. This was our first night out at a bar, feeling like old times in a while. I’m not entirely sure it was up to California’s Covid precautions. Oh well, it was a blast.
In other big news, we are officially cleared to enter Mexico. The red tape has plagued us for 4 months now and despite having months to prepare, we still have a long list of things to do on the boat to be ready for Baja. We got to work cleaning, organizing, fixing things, and all the other things we won’t be able to do next month…like paying taxes and downloading our playlists. The essentials.
We took a break to explore the desert with Dave, and hiked around in the Anzo Borrego Desert. I LOVE cactuses. Montana doesn’t have many and I’ve yet to have a miserable experience like falling into one, so I remain enthralled with them. It was a needed relief from the frantic planning and prep. A big thanks to Dave for taking us!
We return to prep work. Next week I’ll share our plan, and our list of tasks we’re chipping away at before leaving, but as of now, we expect to leave US water on the 31st.
