For some Northwest boaters, it’s the ultimate fantasy—summers spent boating around Puget Sound followed by winters cruising in sunny Mexico.

Shawn Breeding and Heather Bansmer have managed to parlay that fantasy into both a lifestyle and a livelihood. The Bellingham sailors have been cruising in Mexico each winter since 2003, have written and published an acclaimed cruising guide for the Sea of Cortez and are now at work on another guidebook for Pacific Mexico.

Reached in La Paz recently, the pair said they were happy to leave the soggy Northwest behind for another winter. “We’re getting our fair share of sunshine,” said Bansmer. “I was very happy to see (the rain) go away.”

Now seasoned sailors, Breeding, 39, and Bansmer, 35, have come a long way from their land-locked roots. Bansmer was raised in Eastern Washington, spending her childhood horseback riding through sagebrush hills and apple orchards. Breeding lived in Kentucky as a teen and had sailed only a few times before crewing on two sailboats through the South Pacific and New Zealand.

Out on the open water, he quickly became hooked. Soon after returning to Kentucky, Breeding packed his belongings and moved to Bellingham in the spring of 1997, with the goal of buying a sailboat. By the next summer, he’d purchased his 1976 Westsail 32, Om Shanti, and was living aboard.

Breeding was working for an engineering company in Bellingham when he met Bansmer, who worked for a kayak expedition company in the same building. Both had a passion for travel and became fast friends. Before long, Breeding was taking Bansmer out on Bellingham Bay and teaching her how to sail.

“I’d never really been on boats before that,” Bansmer said. “But it seemed like a great way to see other countries and not do it by backpack, but to bring your home with you and travel in comfort. He was a wonderful teacher and taught me how to sail, and there’s not a better place to learn than Puget Sound.”

Shawn Breeding and Heather Bansmer, authors of "The Sea of Cortez: A Cruiser's Guidebook."

The two soon became a couple, and started planning a life of cruising and traveling together. On June 1, 2003, they set sail for a year, circumnavigating Vancouver Island before heading down to Mexico to sail along the Pacific coast and on the Sea of Cortez. They had enough in their cruising kitty to sail for about a year, which made Mexico the perfect destination.

For the next few years, Breeding and Bansmer—now married—spent winters sailing in Mexico, returning to the Northwest in summers to replenish their cruising fund. Breeding did graphics work for a previous employer, supplementing it with handyman jobs and boat work when there wasn’t enough graphics work. Bansmer took whatever she could find, working in a wine shop, doing landscaping and house remodeling, and once taking a part-time job painting a sewage treatment facility.

The annual job-hunting hustle got them thinking about how to create a more sustainable way to make money. At the same time, they noticed there was a dearth of accurate, up-to-date guidebooks for the areas they were cruising in. An idea was born.

“We had all the guidebooks down here and they were starting to get a little dated,” Breeding said. “We thought, ‘We can do better than this.’”

So they started doing research, going out in their dinghy with a GPS and depth sounder and collecting readings for the countless anchorages on the Sea of Cortez. Stopping in towns throughout the region, they’d research the location of marinas and chandleries, talk to people about where the good eateries were, find out about haul-out facilities and shipyards.

The culmination of that work is “The Sea of Cortez: A Cruiser’s Guidebook,” published in 2008. The well-researched, easy-to-read guide includes more than 100 chartlets with GPS readings and waypoints, along with information about customs and immigration, marinas, chandleries and various marine services. Additionally, there are suggestions for hikes and activities ashore and recommendations on restaurants and shops, alongside Breeding and Bansmer’s beautiful color photos of the many secluded anchorages on the Sea of Cortez.

Breeding and Bansmer are working on a second Mexico guidebook.

The book has been lauded by well-known maritime writers such as Beth Leonard, author of “The Voyager’s Handbook,” who said Breeding and Bansmer “have raised the standard for cruising guides in general and guides to Mexico in particular.” Jimmy Cornell, author of “World Cruising Routes,” called it “an excellent book” and “a most comprehensive guide.”

Realizing the little money left for writers after publishers and distributors take their cut, Breeding and Bansmer formed Blue Latitude Press LLC in 2007 and set about publishing, marketing and distributing their book themselves. The first printing sold out, prompting them to update the book and issue a second edition in October of 2009 that includes additional anchorages, more depth soundings and waypoints, and new aerial photos and updated information.

“It’s done really well,” Breeding said. “We’re kind of proud that it’s become known down here. People call it ‘The Blue Bible.’ It’s been really successful.”

The couple is about to start work on a second cruising guide that will focus on the Pacific coast of Mexico, including areas such as Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco. They hope to publish the book next fall in time for the winter cruising season. After that, Breeding said, they’ll likely take a year or two off cruising to grow their publishing company, with the goal of sustaining their cruising lifestyle through book sales and possibly, other publishing ventures.

Their lifestyle may appear cushy, but the pair is quick to point out that it’s involved a considerable amount of compromise and scrimping. “A lot of people think we won the lottery or something, but we haven’t,” Bansmer said. “We just save our pennies and go out and do it very cheaply.”

Their boat is a 33-year-old budget cruiser they paid off before they left on their year-long trip. They went without refrigeration onboard for seven years and made their first trip to Mexico without an autopilot. They get by with a cockpit shower and use inflatable sleeping pads to perk up the tired v-berth and settee cushions. They eat mostly on the boat and rarely stay at marinas, keeping their cruising costs as low as $500 some months.

“We have no debt and just live a very simple lifestyle,’ Breeding said.

One of many secluded bays on the Sea of Cortez.

But the perception by some that the couple’s existence consists simply of cruising and lounging around drinking cervezas irks them.

“Because we work for ourselves, people think, ‘You guys don’t really work. You don’t have real jobs,’” Breeding said. “We probably work a hell of a lot harder than most 9 to 5 workers who go sit in a cubicle, read email half the day and go chat with coworkers.

“That’s our biggest pet peeve, the misconception that we live this life sitting under palm trees and drinking pina coladas. We do a fair bit of that,” Breeding admitted, laughing, “but we actually work pretty hard at this and we’ve spent a lot of time to make this lifestyle a reality.”

It’s a lifestyle they don’t plan to change anytime soon. The Sea of Cortez is an unspoiled paradise, they say, dotted with remote anchorages and tiny fishing villages. But the biggest revelation about Mexico, both say, was the friendliness of its inhabitants and the feeling of safety they’ve had in the places they’ve visited.

“People hear Mexico and they just generalize it as one big place of roving gangs and violence and swing flu, and that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Breeding said. “It’s just a really welcoming place, and people are realy kind and helpful.”

And of course, there’s that sunny weather. “There’s no place more perfect than Washington in the summertime. But once you do a winter down here, it’s really hard to go back and do a winter in Washington,” Bansmer said.

“Just about the time that it starts getting dark and cold and grey in Washington, we start getting really excited to head back down to the boat.”

“Sea of Cortez: A Cruiser’s Guidebook” is available through the book’s website, and from booksellers including Armchair Sailor Books & Charts.