New dinghy davits

Having santa fun in the dirt yard

We've completed a month in Mexico and repairs are coming along nicely on Pura Vida. This year, we celebrate 6 years since our life changing experience of purchasing a boat! Who knew how drastically every aspect of our lives would be impacted by this transition. We love it with all of the trials and tribulations.

This year also celebrates 40 years since Pura Vida launched from the Islander Freeport factory to her life on the water. We are proud to be her owners and happily serve as her caregivers, as she is ours when we are on board.

Sanding and prepping the prop

This year's projects include refit the genset, replacing a leaky port, adding new davits to support our Walker Bay dinghy (see Christmas photo), repairing our dodger, and lots more you don't want to know about...

Potluck at sunset - great times, great food!

Mike's well worn shorts

cleaning and painting generator parts

The Christmas celebrations are underway in Mexico, including Our Lady of Guadalupe this past week. The stores are filled with music, food, gifts and Santa, colorful lights and so much more. Here's this year's lard display at Ley. Always one of my favorites.

bring on the lard!

ceviche en masse - delicioso

Happy Thanksgiving from ... Guaymas, Sonora!

Mt Shasta - inspiring, great views 

Leaving Las Vegas, dinghy drag meant lower mileage

pile o' stuff before loading up the Ford

Janis & Greg - requesting we find their fave bags of enchilada sauce. We'll search!

Hiking with Jerid & Scott in Palm Springs

Thanks for the wine, Kelly & Jeff sipped with Cathy!

We arrived gleeful and ready to get out of the car after 10 days travelling south. The dirt yard at Marina Seca Guaymas beckoned, we were welcomed by the Jorge the guard and the 3 weed-eating sheep who keep the yard “mowed”, quickly followed by the yard workers, Andres, Alejandro and Roberto, all anxious to tell us in rapid fire Spanish how they’ve saved our boat on the night of Hurricane Newton! Turns out, they did save our bacon, as our 3 tight fitting covers which are intended for sun protection, couldn’t handle the windage of up to 140 KM / hr winds on that stormy night. They were at our boat at 3AM, cutting the strings and stopping the swaying of the boat on her stands. While I lost some of the Spanish, it sure sounded like she was close to a tip… and they held her and also had to move some stands as the mud didn’t provide good holding. Wow. We are thankful and provided gifts to acknowledge their fortitude of working through the night protecting us and many boats in our yard. That wasn’t the case with a few other boats whose stories weren’t so sweet.

Marion & Theo - our gracious San Carlos hosts

Pura Vida: a sight for sore eyes!

Deep muddy ruts required the yard workers to move our boat stands

Guard station at Fonatur yard - got a paint can?

Mike looking down!

We both went up the mast today. Me first, unsuccessfully, then Mike did the required repairs!

But I get ahead of myself. We had a superb trip south, just a lot of (slower) miles with the dinghy up top, meandering through CA, NV, AZ and CA again, finally arriving Sonora after visiting friends and swapping stories. A great time – thanks to all of our hosts! And now we celebrate good times and life in the dirt yard with many other cruising friends. It is a special place working on your boat in a arid desert environment, and not for everyone, this we know.

5 newly crafted ports - ready for installation

We’ve spent the last few days working our way through dust plus too much stuff brought with us, stowing and dispositioning items that seemed so important when we created our lists last spring! And now on to projects that will bring us safety and security on board. New set up for the generator, 5 new ports to be installed (leaking ports are never a welcome thing on a boat), redefined anchor locker config and well, the list is long and the hours will be long. It’s why we’re here and thankful for every day in the Mexican sun. Morning walks to the bay to count waterfowl, warm tortillas and fresh fish, butterflies, the sound of banda music and barking dogs, holiday displays of lard. Welcome to Guaymas!

We enjoyed the first of the parades on Independence day. Everyone’s included and the parades go on forever.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Enthralled parade goers

Cute little Mexican flag girls, dancing

Revolutionaries

Lots of marching in uniform 

Unusual musical instruments, 30 strong

Traditional Yaqui Indian dance

Check out the parade shoes!

Oh, and it's about 85 degrees. No sweat.

Tons of pick ups filled with giant speakers!

Waiting for the dancers in front of them

Happy Halloween - Time to head south

Our first and only selfie on our 9th Anniversary

We are so happy to have a small home that is our own. It’s been a great transition into a community of 71 floating homes.

Because we face ‘inside’ on the river, we enjoy the private, wooded shoreline where the occasional raccoon family tromps on by at low tide. Kayaks, paddle boards and the occasional dinghy are our only traffic – besides low flying heron and hustling birds. Our friends and neighbors will keep an eye on the place while we travel.

Packing up our boat stuff

We are heading south after 3 Nov, the last work day for both of us. I had to quit my job, they didn't want a traveling minstrel this year and I respect that. So I interviewed my replacement for the job description I wrote. It’s a crazy thing to quit when you have a "good job" yet I am OK with moving on.

We’re loading up the car, heading to Pura Vida in Guaymas, Sonora. We’re anxious to ensure she’s survived the rains and wrath of Hurricane Newton. Every trip N and S brings new adventures. We love seeing friends and exploring as we go.

Early October, I enjoyed my annual trip to Wisconsin to spend time with my family. The trek to the Madison UW campus is always filled with great memories of glorious youth and college life.

Happy Halloween!

Afloat in Portland!

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I've been trying to set aside time to write a blog for a few weeks now. I have so many stories in my head, I could explode..... or maybe one day, I'll start writing the book that's rattling around in my head. It's been an amazing, emotional transition getting settled into our tiny floating home and I will share that it's incredible to have a place of Our Own!! No more living out of duffel bags and ZipLoks while we are in Portland. It’s a huge and positive change for us after 5 years of being vagabonds while working multiple jobs. It's not a lifestyle for everyone, I might add.

Looking toward our place from the ramp.

1 of 4 layers removed fromthe bathroom wall. Scary stuff.

You may recall that we purchased our floating home last fall before we left for Mexico. I know, timing is everything. We thought we’d be anxious while we were gone about buying a home and splitting town, but hey it's us and frankly, once we were on the road heading south for Pura Vida, we’re about living that life to the fullest; the northwest life can wait.

Mike tearing out and rebuilding the bathroom

We arrived in Portland on February 28^th for my long anticipated return to my 30-hr/wk job, a continuation of the 10-yr/wk I was doing during our winter months. So you jump right into a work environment where the pace is fast, the deadlines are real and the sitting factor, intense. No more up and down the ladder

when the boat is on the hard as the last couple weeks before our departure, no more balancing on a moving vessel which is part of our core strength, and importantly, a greatly reduced randomness that comes from a boat lifestyle.

LazyBoy loveseat- splurge for our living room.

And so began this journey toward a home of our own. It’s been a long, tumultuous time as we prepared our ‘tiny home’ for us, for our lives, after our self-imposed relative state of homelessness. Five summers of moving multiple times into variable living situations each with its own opportunities, blessings and challenges, and of course, being ready to vacate on demand. Five years of "visitation rights" to see our stuff at Public Storage.

Using dinner plates that we haven't seen for 5 yrs

This summer we had the distinctly cool deal of moving back in with our 80 year old roommate from late last summer (our 4^th place in 2015). He’s our friend’s dad, a super nice guy, great place on the water, fun to share a living space with. And flexible to let us stay longer than our anticipated “one month” before we could move into our new digs. We wanted to move in, but buying our floating home ‘as is’ has a broad range of opportunities, shall we say, and we were in for the long haul.

Our first fire on the deck. That's friend Tony's boat

When I say long, I mean long enough that our contractor just moved his incredible cache of equipment out of our place in late July, just in time for my sister’s visit and us to figure out where stuff could actually fit in our tiny space. Plus, the house resettled after his heavy saws, drills and painting gear moved such that we listed even more to port, if that was possible.

Kitchen after

Kitchen before

My digression – now that we are moved in to our tiny home (658 sq ft / 61 sq m*), we had the floatation / leveling dude come yesterday. I’d hoped that leveling process would mean our wonky front door actually fits!  But alas, we still have a major air gap to be dealt with. His tasks included: removing 2 old beaver nests (go away!), a spent oil drum whose insulation melted away and installing additional floats and shims on our old growth giant logs to get the house level. For now. I understand flotation changes over time, so we will become friends with the floating home leveler. And, please, no more beavers under our house! We had one swim up to our float 2 nights ago with a giant branch in his mouth and he dove with that nesting branch just under our home. We yelled: NO but I don’t think they listen or care.

The new pantry cabinets ROCK

Although I suppose a whopping 650 sf doesn't qualify us as a tiny home like on the shows, which varies depending on what you hear, I have to say, ours is quaint and small. We measure every space 10 times to figure out walking space, furniture placement and trip hazards. It is interesting to note that on the 10^th time, the measurements are still the same! So you execute accordingly. Example #51: cabinets. To create a pantry for food storage (mandatory!), we installed the typical 12" upper cabinets in a lower space to create a pantry, as our walkthrough space had to be large enough to actually pass between the “pantry” and “office”. 

Assembling the grill so
we can cook. No stove yet.

This will be our office. Mike building the desk.
Currently, I'm sitting at this crate as my desk.

Now this space usually would serve as a kitchen seating area but for us, it’s got to be two unique spaces – office AND storage. More stories abound on that front but only for those who actually care about the traumas of downsizing and crazy things like no storage. No garage, alas and that also means no more monthly Public Storage payment!

Another aha! moment - we are never more than 10 steps from the kitchen garbage receptacle which, upon reflection, can be a good thing.

There’s more stories waiting to unfurl from my brain but for now, I’ll do this post and share a few photos of this lovely place we now proudly call Home.

* For those who comment that we "should" be used to a small space on Pura Vida, she offers more storage than our home.