The Cruising Lifestyle

The Cruismobile (Betsy F. photo)

Over the past few months we have developed a rhythmic pattern to our cruising style. Everyone has different comfort requirements, varying in degrees of land to anchorge to sea time. For us, a week in a marina gives us time to explore the local color, catch up with friends, dine out, complete boat chores, stock up on supplies, have the laundry done, use real toilets that flush, enjoy an endless supply of hot showers, and last but not least, walk Spark without firing up the dinghy engine. Traveling with a vizsla places some restrictions on our nomadic lifestyle. I miss the two or three day passages, but that distance and time for Spark at sea would be excruciatingly painful for us all. Compromise plays a heavy role in shaping our adventure. Sparky is a self-imposed restriction that adds greatly to our enjoyment, yet he reduces our mobility. Everytime we enter a marina, and in many anchorages, we arrive to shouts of "Sparky's here!" So I suspect our little mascot-ambassador is adding enjoyment to the experiences of others as well. He's "Value-Added" to be sure.
 

Our Ambassador

If weather for travel is too windy or too cold we stretch out the marina stay to 10 days, but by the tenth day we get a little "buggy" and are really needing to go back out to sea. On the mainland this often means a night passage followed by several day sails to nearby anchorages. Then once again 10 days at anchorage leaves us with a bare refrigerator, an empty liquor locker, and surprisingly too much laundry. The last is a mystery because we pretty much wear the same clothes (shorts, t-shirts, and swimsuits) everyday. Nevertheless the stuff seems to multiply when we aren't looking. So, then it's back to a marina and the process repeats itself. Kind of a ground hog day existence. In all settings, sea, anchorage, and marina, we dream about the "next adventure".  Latin American, the Pacific Northwest to Canada to Alaska, the Caribbean? Maine? In the between times I get homesick for family and the beautiful California Coast, and my City by the Bay.                                                                       


El Tiburon at rest in Chamela (David F. photo)

It was hard to leave Marina La Cruz, but knowing that we were headed further south along the Mexican Riveria, or what is also referred to as Coastalegre, helped us to cast off El Tiburon's dock lines once again. It also helped to know we would return in a month.