Sail Agora

Hello friends, Steph here. Pardon our blog delay; after arriving in Cabo San Lucas we were overwhelmed with, well, fun mostly. And provisioning. Los Cabos is the end of the Pacific and the start of the Sea (or Gulf, depending on who you ask), which was our aim for this trip.

Though “blog-wise” we’ve just arrived in Cabo San Lucas, in real time we are on Isla Espíritu Santo and I write this from a extinct crater filled with turquoise waters and friendly turtles. I can see why people sail around the world to get to this very island. As if someone dropped Moab on top of Tahiti and sprinkled vibrant coral reefs around the edges.

Being here means I am near the end of my trip (Thatcher will continue on), and I’ve been reflecting on all we’ve been through. I don’t want to bore anyone with the trials and tribulations of a sailing trip; instead I’d rather share a list of things I found fascinating as a newbie “first mate”. Here we go…

Potentially Interesting Facts:

• We filled our 40 gallon water tank in San Diego on Feb 9 and ran out in Cabo San Lucas on March 10. To be fair, I had a few jugs of bottled water for drinking, and Thatcher did at the end (though it pained him ever so much). We saved the water by showering and washing dishes with sea water. As you might have guessed, neither our bodies nor our dishes ever felt clean
• The amount of trash we went through is almost as impressive as the amount of water we saved. By Cabo San Lucas we had a 20 gallon trash bag filled after 2 weeks. I can only hope this was more than “normal life” because everything we consumed on the boat needed a decent shelf life and therefore solid packaging
• Our anchor light uses twice the electricity of our freezer, which is a remark on how awesome our freezer is AND how bad the anchor light is (though the light WAS very bright and useful when trying to find Agora through a packed Cabo Bay)
• Thatcher and I became obsessed with Downton Abbey, which isn’t an interesting fact as much as it is a plea for everyone who hasn’t seen the show to do so immediately. Approximately 80% of our conversations involved Lady Mary, Matthew, O’Brien or Cousin Violet. We would be sailing past pristine beaches and breaching whales in stunned silence until you’d hear, “You know? I think it was Thomas who poisoned the Turkish Ambassador!”
• If Thatcher and I weren’t discussing Lord and Lady Grantham, we were cleaning. Every spare moment was consumed by cleaning. In the real world, we wash dishes once in the evening and vacuum once a week. On Agora, we entered Boat-Space-Time-Continuum where dirt accumulates at 3x the speed on land. Cleaned dishes would vanish from the dish rack and reappear moments later in the cockpit covered with crusty cheese. And if we didn’t vacuum daily, dust-bunnies grew so large they evolved organs and became our sailing pets
• Though I had my bout of bad seasick days, it was a far cry from where I was a year ago. I attribute acupuncture (thanks Caroline!), ginger pills (thanks Lindsay!), and sunflower seeds to the grand improvement
• On the note of useful tips, clove is a must-bring when dealing with Mexican potable water. Just as the spice absorbs flavor in a stew, clove can absorb icky things in your stomach (scientifically speaking). Thanks to clove (and Carl who suggested it!), Montezuma did not enact his revenge on Thatcher or I
• We are happy to report Mrs. Basil stayed alive the whole trip, despite several topplings and one incident where the “adventure bag” was thrown on her head. She enjoyed seeing the shores of Mexico and graciously offered a couple leaves every morning for my smoothie, which was made possible by aforementioned Awesome Freezer and not-yet-named Portable Blender
• Manta rays are abundant in the Sea of Cortez and are quite the acrobatists, putting Simone Biles to shame with their backflip abilities. Despite some postulations, scientists still don’t know the reason behind the behavior. To our chagrin we never caught one on camera
• In the 12 years I’ve spent in Santa Barbara, I’ve seen 5 whales. On this 2 month trip, not only did we loose count of how many whale we saw, we almost hit two and likely went over one. Seems whale collisions are a real danger south of Bahía Totugas during the correct season, which is perhaps a happy statistic on the revival of the whale population
• On the subject, Thatcher and I discovered: if we heard a breath next to us in Cabo, it was a whale. If we heard a breath next to us in La Paz, it was a dolphin. If we hear a breath next to us at our current anchorage, it is a turtle
• That’s if we are on deck. In the cabin of the boat (which is essentially half under-water) we would hear the squeaking of dolphin ecolocation and, on one magical evening, we were serenaded with a whale song for an hour. Thinking at first it was a strange cry of nearby coyotes, we ran to deck and discovered the noise went away after we passed the resonance of the boat hull
• Furniture pieces on sailboats are shape shifters. One bench in the cabin will be where you snuggle up to watch Downtown Abbey after a delicious taco dinner and epic day of snorkeling. On that same bench the next evening, you will be hyperventilating and singing yourself to sleep as the boat plummets through 12ft wave after 12ft wave, each violently shaking the boom and making you think the thunderous noises are the Captain falling overboard
• On the subject of rapid changes, the temperature rise coming around the tip of Baja into Cabo was drastic. It is best illustrated by a snapshot of our heavy winter jackets and zero-degree sleeping bags strewn across the floor as we ripped open our long-forgotten summer box and scrambled into bathing suits and fins
• Everything “boat life” is extreme, and money is no exception. You’re either spending $1,175.98 a week buying 26 cartoons of oatmilk at Costco, or a month will pass and you’ve purchased a $30 taco lunch that should’ve been $24 but you didn’t have any small bills
• You will have cell signal when you least expect it and don’t want it, like in tiny fishing villages where the houses are held up by PVC, tarps, and Dora the Explorer stickers. I was very excited to “be off the grid” when we embarked on our trip and sadly had cell for a month straight
• So much is possible in small spaces. We did yoga by the galley, strength conditioning in the cockpit, and I got cardio by dancing in our 5 square-foot head because it had the best acoustics. Thatcher even gave Mrs. Basil a drum concert one evening by placing his kit in front of the nav station
• Eggs are a plenty in Mexico (are they still rare in the US?) but we couldn’t for the life of us find peanut butter or yeast
• Public laundromats don’t exist in Cabo San Lucas. Google will tell you there are 15 lavandarías within 5 feet of where you’re currently standing but all will be taped off and solely operated by the same matronly woman who presumably runs from one to the other changing wigs in between
• The sea-water hand-pump toilet will provide a full upper-body workout at the hours of 7am, 9am, 12pm, 2pm, 6pm, 9pm and 1am and will be the bane of your existence UNLESS it’s a night with bioluminescence. With bioluminescence, the sparkly phytoplankton provide a midnight light show and you merrily pump away
• In Mexico, you are kept ON your boat when lifted out of the water for boatyard repairs (in America, the liability of such an act would be absurd). We were packing tools and sunscreen for the day’s work when we looked outside and saw the boat was already 10 feet in the air
• The cruiser community is as giving and close-knit as the sailing books illustrate them to be. Or perhaps we just ran into incredible people. A list of everyone we met along the way and the generosity they showed is worth a blog entry of its own
• Post Script: it is now a week later and we’re back in La Paz. A few hours after we anchored, Thatcher looked behind us and saw SV Delos. Don’t worry if you don’t know who they are, Thatcher has a perfect description: “They’re kinda like The Beatles for YouTube sailors… or maybe the Kinks.”