Other people celebrated Christmas a couple of weeks ago. For us, it arrived yesterday morning around 8:30, when a big truck came rolling into CSR Marine’s boatyard, carrying our Island Packet 38 from San Carlos, Mexico. This was the day we’ve waited for since the end of July, when we first saw the boat in [...]

It’s been a week and a half since we returned to Seattle from San Carlos, where we spent a couple of weeks decommissioning our new boat for its road trip to Seattle. And I’m a little surprised to find myself missing the place. Truth be told, we didn’t think much of San Carlos when we first [...]

There’s the fantasy of sailing—cruising to beautiful anchorages, cocktails in the cockpit, lazy days spent reading and sunning—and there’s reality. We got a dose of the latter last week, spending four days in a dusty, dirty Mexican boatyard to decommission our boat for its journey north to Seattle. The boat was hauled out of the [...]

It seemed like a safe enough plan. We’d head out on Thanksgiving and spend the holiday anchored out in Bahia Algodones, a beautiful bay with a sandy beach and a terrific beachfront bar, the Soggy Peso. We’d take our dinghy out and go exploring, grill some fish for dinner and feel reassured knowing that we [...]