The law of unintended consequences is how I wound up living on a sailboat in Mexico. Sure, I’d gunk-holed in my little Catalina 25 around South Puget Sound and it was great. But, that was years ago and I was happily living in the country with my acreage and horses. That was when my pal, Ken Amman made me an offer I had to accept.

“How’d you like the cheapest vacation of your life, pal?”, he asked. Ken had just bought a cool 35’ blue water boat that was located in a place that had never been on my radar: La Paz, BCS Mexico. Ken said all I had to do was show up – the fish tacos and lodging was on him.
Of course, “cheap” is one of my most favorite words. But the deal closer for me was that the offer was made during a particularly cold, rainy and grey Oregon winter.

For the un-initiated, the Bible’s Noah had it made compared to those of us from the Pacific Northwest. Noah had to deal with “40 days and 40 nights” of rain – that takes us to about December 1st in Oregon. And, the rain continues to around mid-June. So, of course, I accepted Ken’s kind offer.
In other blogs, I’ll try to capture the authentic Mexican feel of La Paz and the incredibly beautiful and deserted anchorages of the Sea of Cortez. Words like “magical”, and “welcoming” start to define the area that Jacques Cousteau described as “The World’s Aquarium”. But it was the sailing that hooked me. I’d never lived on a well-conceived boat intended to travel oceans. And having something that size seized by strong winds and bashing thru big seas – with no other boats or signs of civilization in sight – pure sensory delight.

Even your skin feels different and more alive with a fine coating of salt; trying to walk below, grasping hand-holds as you go with the boat heeled 20 degrees and pitching.
The day before my scheduled return to civilization, a friend called to tell me that Oregon was having severe winter weather, that a pipe had burst and that my basement was filled with water. At that moment I was slathered in sun screen, listening to Cuban music and having a fine Lemonada con Mineral. At that moment, I knew I was returning to the land of wet parkas and vitamin D deficiencies. I almost started to cry. Not because of the pipes or rain or parkas – but because here, in Mexico, for the first time – life had started to make sense.
Two months later, in February 2010, I became the proud owner of a boat that would become Aventura; a boat I didn’t know how to sail. I bought a boat to sail in an ocean I’d never even been a passenger upon. It wasn’t a thinkin’ thing.

During the next two and a half years, all the sails, the ground tackle and the electronics were replaced. I and some of my more hardy and foolish friends (including Ken) figured out how to sail her. We went out when other boats were coming in. We learned to reef sails in strong winds, to dock in cross-currents and to survive Seattle shipping at night – relying on radar, AIS, and dead reckoning (and staring at the chart-plotter until our eyes crossed). There were a lot of mistakes.
The first time I took Aventura out after I got all the new electronics, she touched bottom. I was too busy playing the video game to sail the boat and watch the navigational buoys. Lesson learned.

A squall laid the boats’ spreaders in the water – where she remained while I was paralyzed with indecision. Then, I released the sheets and she bobbed back upright like a punching dummy. Lesson learned. I didn’t know what a spring line was until I laid her sideways in a two-fer slip at a foreign marina while the locals looked on in disbelief. Then they righted her in the slip and showed me how to always put the spring line on first when docking to keep control. Lesson learned. ‘So many lessons – all paid for with the currency of surprise, occasional shock and frequent losses of “look good”. And, yeah – I’m still learning and I still screw up. We all do.

But with time, love, practice and experience come more aces in the hole, more shots in the locker – more “game” and better game plans. One of the more helpful things I heard was that 99% of the things that go wrong on the water are “merely dramatic and not life threatening”.
And, in the meantime…..I’d hear about this weird event: “The Baja HaHa”. That sounded interesting.

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