Yup we’re still in Seattle, and unfortunately here to stay for another three months. Rob’s boss is a very persuasive man and now that Rob is getting some traction on his project they really don’t want him to leave. My boss at Real Networks agreed to keep me working through January so we’re settled into a little furnished rent by the month apartment in Magnolia through January. It’s been nice to be home, see friends and family and put money in the retirment account, but we definitely would be going back to the boat if it weren’t for Rob’s boss.
Rob went to La Paz and checked on Yohelah before he started work, and she weathered her first hurricane (Henriette) no problem at all. I did get to make the wonderful trip up to Alaska with T2 to see Debs and we had an incredible 5 days riding horses and having some excellent “girl time” in the mountains. There are some pix of that trip here . I’ll finish up the video soon and post a link for that. And Rob has had some extra time and access to a slide scanner this summer and digitized some of his photos shot underwater when we was diving in the Red Sea in the 80’s and some Caribbean diving shots. These are excellent photos and some of the reason we have scuba gear, a dive compressor and underwater photo gear on Yohelah that we’re anxious to get to the South Pacific to get some use out of. You’ll definitely want to slow down the slideshow speed and look closely at the detail in these photos.
But we’ve already learned that making cruising “plans” is totally a waste of time. As we were preparing to go cruising I used to tell friends and family things like “Oh yeah – see you in Greece in 2010”. Yeah, no. This summer we’ve had to explain a dozen times why we’re back in Seattle already. And we’ve found this summer that “plans” we’ve had for the last five years to go to Ecuador on our way south aren’t going to happen now. The new president of Ecuador (and many other Central and South American leaders) are swinging way far left and definitely on the anti-capitalism bandwagon. But in Ecuador they’re making some very unfavorable decisions that affect cruising yachts like refusing to sell fuel to them and retroactively imposing a 10% tax on the boat for stays over 180 days. Long story short – we’ll spend the year in a hot and wet Central America (at least that’s the “plan” for now).
We’re going to go back to La Paz during Thanksgiving week to get her ready for cruising south. She needs new bottom paint (thanks to Andiamo for taking bottom paint from Seattle to La Paz for us), and Rob’s rebuilding the fridge. I’ll get all the sails and halyards and canvas back up and get her back in ship-shape. Then at Christmas we’ll go down and cruise north for 10 days and get to see a little teeny bit of the Sea of Cortez. Like Alaska, there’s just not going to be time right now to see as much as we want of Mexico. But we’re anxious to move on and get to Central America while the weather’s still good in the winter, so when we return in January we’ll jet south (relatively).
Today Yohelah is warm and cozy at her dock in La Paz and we’re getting ready for a stormy winter in Seattle……
