Being asked to write a guest blog is un poco intimidating after the blogmeister has gotten you this far. But I’ll gladly give my impression of life aboard Bravo from the mother/mother-in law’s perspective of the first six days of our journey from Zihuatanejo to La Cruz.
First off, when you hear someone measure something as a boatload of this or that, let me just say, the entire trip to wherever the heck they end up, from inception to execution is a boatload of work. It’s a daily dance workout with digital readouts, Garmin points, engine speed, wind speed, geographic headings, chart plotting, weather watching, rigging and actual sailing… jib lines, main lines, shrouds, halyards, winches, and more. Staying Out of the Way is the name of my dance workout. I have to predict where I need to move my body to stay out the way, with 3 points of contact at all times. I pick a spot and I jump to where I’m most out of the way. Usually followed by ” Betsy, are you okay?”. There are buckles and cleats and hooks, lines, and ladders just waiting to mess with me. At night we all get a harness and a line clipped in so no one goes overboard. I am relieved of night watch because everyone knows I’d fall asleep and they really don’t want to put the boat in my sleepy hands while they sleep. That’s working well for me. I feel loved, the boat doesn’t crash into a tanker, and I get lots of sleep.
Melissa and Andy are rocking this. Years of preparation has paid off so they now can figure out what to do when everything breaks…which it does, how to provision the boat for a year, and how to communicate clearly and effectively when quick decisions have to be made. The food has been amazing, cold beers, hibiscus tea and rum drinks, enchiladas with homemade tortillas and slaw, curried chicken salad sandwiches on fresh home-made bread. The amazing thing about their meals and life-style is that they figure out how to make the littlest tiniest teensiest footprint possible. Consumer consciousness is an art and a science. No straw with my margarita, thank you.
Today, on our fifth day, we snorkeled in a bay with tiny jellyfish that had me swimming back to the boat after a few minutes but Andy said they didn’t hurt. We sailed north in what was predicted to be 18 knot winds, tops. Actually, our knots topped out at 33 with average wind speed at 25-30 knots. It was a wild ride, a wet ride, a long ride, a 5-star ride…right into the wind the entire time. I’m the only one who downed a shot of Don Julio when we got to anchorage. What is wrong with these people. Seriously? I’ve already had my second shot and they are still waiting for Geoff to serve the mixed drinks.
In a few days Geoff and I will step off this luxury cruise and Andy and Meli will jump across the pond, which is an entirely different dance. We’ll call that Dancing with the Trade Winds. Before I sign off, I have to say how proud I am of these two for first jumping out of the terrestrial box, i.e. quitting the rat race, and gearing up for an unpredictable, once-in-a lifetime liberating ocean experience filled with different cultures, languages and customs. Wherever they go, they will be mighty fine ambassadors in a time when we need to go to extreme measures to recapture the integrity that we once knew and identified with as North Americans. We all have a boatload of work to do, but they will have so much more fun on the actual boat.
Sailing on SV Bravo 