6 Month Countdown!

Well, the days of taking any day off from moving towards our goal are in the past. -Which is fine with me. I’m ready to go now, but nothing else is. And I guess I’m one of the two people that needs to get those things done before we set sail south. -Unless there’s anyone that wants to work for free out there???

Remember that itinerary I wrote out about a month ago? Yeah, pretty sure that’s changed now. You may remember how we were going to go to the Channel Islands last year & ended up in Catalina? I’m slowly understanding this is just sailing life. So, as of this point, our itinerary consists of leaving here at the end of September, getting to San Diego by the end of October & getting to Cabo by mid-November. And then….. we have ideas but probably won’t share them until after the fact. Because, weather…

All I know is that I’m so thankful to have people to go to for advice. -Special shout out to Jenn for always being there for me to reach out to about pretty much anything related to sailing, Mexico & life in general. Also to Tom & Peter, on Sailing Bohemia, for always responding when I write to them; even though they don’t know me personally. I mean, they do know who I am but we’ve never met face to face. I also thank all of these people for not laughing too hard at me for being a little over-ambitious with our itinerary. -I think Jenn basically asked me if we wanted to actually enjoy the places we were planning on stopping at. 😂

Bring all the maps just in case.

We are getting house projects done. I think this is the area I’m scared most of not getting under control. -That’s why I’m letting Matt take care of most of it! I’m half joking. I’ll take care of what I can, but I can’t dry-wall or caulk like he can. -Or chop all the wood in the backyard. Or basically renovate our house. I will paint though & continue to get rid of stuff one way or another.

Just realizing while I am posting this, that I am going to have to re-paint that section! Was that 3 or 4 layers of color washing & glaze?

Maybe with these 2 cracks we just go with the aging house look?

In addition to figuring out what needs to be done before we take off, I am still learning to take videos & edit them. I am getting more footage but I have a lot to still go through. The learning process of filming & putting videos together is more time consuming than I would like to admit. Wishing I had an expert by my side through it all. However, I found this photo below & it looks like dogs are pretty adept at doing these kind of tasks. So in the morning I will have a long chat with Zephyr.

This pup may be cute & smart but at least Zephyr doesn’t need glasses.

We do need to start making schedules of things that we need to schedule before we go. Doctor’s appointments, vet appointments -those are for Zephyr, calls to insurance companies, bill payments, marina reservations, mail processing, etc…..

It seems like every day I think of something new. I guess the nice thing about sailing is that we are going pretty slow. So, if we do forget about something, we can probably walk back home to take care of it. 😄

This last week we were very happy that it was warm enough to work on the boat. I helped Matt replace an invalid stanchion. I should have timed it, but it is a substantial amount of work for such a seemingly basic item. We did film it. So hopefully that will be up in a week or so.

Matt brought the new internet. Don’t ask me. I’m about as knowledgeable as Jen, from The IT Crowd. -One of the best shows ever!

I brought Harriet’s understudy. We got a backup auto-pilot. It was like the last one on the planet & exactly like the one we have. So if anything goes awry with Harriet 1 we now have a Harriet 2. Not that I don’t have faith in #1 Harriet. But so many cruisers say the auto-pilot is their most prized & needed possession on the boat. -Why take the risk?

Below are a few photos of the stanchion replacing process. It will be explained better in our upcoming video.

Harriet’s understudy or Harriet 2 on the left & The Internet on the right!

We will be taking a little detour at the end of the month to participate in the Newport to Ensenada race with my dad! This means we will actually be getting to pop into Mexico for a little bit before autum!

So that’s what we have on our plates right now. Part of me is like, dinner is over-rated, let’s skip it & just get to dessert. -And that, my folks, is the secret to staying young!

Of course always strive to be better & more mature. But never completely let go of that 3 year old inside of you. And never let anyone know you are doing that -except for your closest friends.

Daddy, did you know, did you know I really like steak?!

Thanks so much for reading! If you haven’t checked out our YouTube videos, head on over to youtube.com/@svmersea. We will hopefully be adding a few more each month. Just needing to catch up on…. a lot! 😄 Wish us luck! See you next week!