Day of Rest

Today’s plan included a bunch of errands, laundry, showers, and getting the boat ready for 2 days and 2 nights at sea. All before we needed to leave in the early afternoon. By 10 this morning, it was obvious that was a bad idea. We’re all still recovering from the cold we caught and Bryan came down with it last, so he’s still the worst off. He’s in no condition to deal with the potential of bad weather on the way to Mazatlan, so we decided to spend one more day here in Cabo before we leave.

It was a really good decision. We’ve been taking breaks around the edges, but it still feels like we’ve been working hard since we got here. Today we had a relaxing morning and did a few boat chores before mustering the troops for a trip to the beach. We hadn’t touched sand since our first day here; it was about time.
We packed up swimsuits and towels as well as our new snorkel kits (One of the people we met in Ensenada told us that the Spanish word for snorkel is snorfular. Say it out loud and try not to smile:-)

We walked in the heat around the marina to the strip on the other side and through a naval base to the beach where the locals go. The beaches were a bit steep and the surf a bit high, but we found a place where we thought we wouldn’t kill ourselves. By this time, we were all ready to cool off.

Hannah found a place in the shade of the majestic rock formations and built a sand model (not to scale) of Middle Earth. There may have also been some knitting involved:-)

Meira and Bryan jumped in right away and then Bryan coached me through the first strange minutes of learning to breathe through a tube. We floated around for a while looking at the sand formations on the sea floor, spotting the occasional brightly colored fish.

These rays were always accompanied by a pale fish friend. It makes me wonder what connection they have. I’ll probably look it up sometime, but it’s not a bad thing to sit with wonder for a bit.

Bryan got some great underwater video too. At some point we'll take the time to edit and post it. We know we’ll find clearer water and more plentiful sea life in other places, but we don’t care. Today was pretty cool.

We walked back, resisting the urge to take a water taxi the 2/3 mile or so. On our way back, we ran into someone we’d met on our first day here. He works on the other side of the marina, and we hadn’t been over there since he helped us find our way around early in our stay. That first day, when he found out about our plight, he started searching right away for a new dinghy for us. We were coming back from dinner when he pulled up in a friend’s water taxi, bow to the rock quay. “Get in, get in! Quickly!” He hollered and motioned so enticingly, even though we didn’t know what he wanted or where he was taking us, we climbed over the railing, down the rocks and over the bow into the water taxi. It turns out, he’d been looking for us all that first afternoon. He had a friend who was selling a couple of  “very new” inflatables and thought they might be a good option for us. His friend was gone by the time we got over there, so he brought us back, free of charge, and a bit more sedately. We made casual arrangements to meet the next day, but by that night we’d decided to build instead of buy. It was great to find him and give him the update on how everything had turned out. We showed him pictures, though it took a bit to make it clear we’d actually built the whole dinghy since he’d last seen us. 
We cleaned up a bit at the boat and then walked up into town to find dinner. We decided to try a restaurant that had been recommended to us by one of the security guards. But we couldn’t quite remember what it was called or where it was. I finally stopped a stranger and asked directions (in a language I don’t really speak, to a place I didn’t know the name of). We figured it out and started walking that way, but before we found the restaurant the smell of flame-grilled meat reeled us in. We didn’t regret our decision for a minute.

See if you can spot the rotisserie pork on the left. Oh, my.

Then, just to finish off the day right, we stopped by the nearby McDonalds (they have angus hamburgers with tabasco sauce here; of course they do!) and got ice cream cones all around. The cones were made out of Oreo cookie and I can’t figure out why they don’t sell them everywhere. Mmmmm! We got a little goofy, but left before we got kicked out.

The girls went back to clean up the boat while Bryan and I came up to the marina plaza to do the laundry and make a phone call. And now, I’m typing this standing by the table in the laundry room, trying to finish before the last dryer does and hoping I haven’t forgotten anything we need for the trip to Mazatlan. We didn’t get all our errands run today, but I think our time at the beach was just what we needed!

Launch Day!

In the morning, as usual here in Cabo, I woke up before dawn to the sound of the fishermen leaving from our dock. Have I mentioned that the tequila parties go on until 2 or 3 in the morning? I fell back asleep and when I woke again, Bryan was already gone. I figured he’d gone to check on Rover first thing, but a few minutes later, he showed up, back from picking up some stainless washers and morning coffee. Meira was ready to go with him and Hannah got herself ready while I ran up to the marina plaza’s good internet to try to secure reservations at a marina in Mazatlan (we’ve heard it can be difficult during the holidays but we accidentally ended up with reservations in 2 different marinas!)
Every day we walk the glitzy gauntlet. Just past the shops and restaurants we go up some stairs, through a parking lot, and around a corner to our build site. Every weekday in the parking lot, there’s a man selling breakfast out of the back of his truck. Several reliable sources told us how good his food was, but each time we planned to buy some, something went wrong. Either he left before we got around to it, or we didn’t have any cash. Today the stars aligned! I ran around the corner to grab some cash from Bryan and came back for a late breakfast. While in line, we chatted with a few information booth workers and some other people who worked in the area. I felt like I’d just been inducted into a secret, behind-the-scenes-of-Cabo club. We ordered "Poco de todos"— a little bit of everything— and came back with more food than even hungry boatbuilders could tuck away, and we spread it out on our tarp-covered worktable and stood around shoveling in tacos, sopes, rice and beans, eggs with chorizo, nopales salsa, and potatoes. About halfway through, I realized we didn’t have the camera, so I ran back to the boat to get it (a bit of a fiasco, as I’d forgotten to grab a key card for the gate. Then I got some help getting in and couldn’t get back out. Having a problem is a great excuse to practice my Spanish!)

I got back in time to see the oarlocks already installed and Bryan and Meira working on the rope rub rail.

We’d always talked about doing something like this on Splitpea, but never found the right kind of rope. On Rover, we’d had to screw the gunwales in through the hull, so we were really glad to have some nice rope to cover the screw holes. Bryan twisted the rope open, and pushed the screw and washer through, then let the rope twist closed again to cover the hole.

A couple feet from finished, he ran out of screws. While he was walking to the hardware store, I put some twine wraps on the rope to finish the loose ends and chatted with a fisherman who stopped by to see our progress.

It was hot work in the sun, but we wanted to give the still-curing paint all the help it could get. I asked at the desalination plant for some drinking water and had to laugh when they pointed me to a water cooler, full of brand-name bottled water.
Soon, Bryan got back with the last of our floatation and installed it and the last of the rope. And just like that…we were done. We’d been cleaning up and taking our tools back every night, so it didn’t take long to gather all our garbage (a boat comes around daily to pick it up, so we could just leave it with the shop’s trash) and transition the space from boatyard back to parking lot. It felt strange to be done-done. To just walk away from what had quickly become the focus of our days.
After a few minutes of rest and a bit of fiddling with our video cameras, we headed back for the big reveal. We hooked our GoPro wide-angle video camera to a clamp on Rover’s stern.

Then, with an authoritative, “And…up!” we were off. Someday, I may be able to post some of the video. I hope it shows all the double takes. But I took some still pictures of the area to show you what I keep talking about.

We stopped often to show off the boat to all our new friends. And to rest. Rover  is light, for a boat, but still a lot to carry for 1/4 mile or so. We stopped for a little longer near our dock and I stayed with the boat while Bryan and the girls ran down to the boat for oars and life jackets. A confused man walked by. “I thought I saw you carrying a boat through here a minute ago,” he said. “I didn’t know why you were carrying it when there’s all that water down there!” He gestured to the harbor, just a few feet away over the rails. We all laughed, satisfied his curiosity, and moved on. We made it around the busy ATM corner without any casualties and stopped a couple more times on our way to the marina office. We’d let our friends there know what we were planning, and as we came up to the office entrance, found ourselves the subject of a paparazzi-style photo shoot. They’d all come out with their cameras and we stopped to get a few more pictures (all on their cameras, I’m sorry to say. I may get copies though; stay tuned.) As we turned the last corner onto the boat ramp, our friend asked if we’d brought the champagne. When we said no, he pulled out a small bottle of tequila, perfect for a true Mexican christening! We poured a bit over the bow (a much safer option than breaking glass all over the sidewalk) and tipped the traditional shot for Poseidon into the sea. Then we donned our lifejackets, stripped off our shoes, and waded into the water to float Rover for the first time. I looked up from the water to see friends and strangers on the wharf videotaping and photographing our exciting day. We waved at our cheerleaders, so pleased to have achieved this moment together.

The row to our boat took only a minute, so we took a little tour around the harbor to get to know our new craft. Rover isn’t Splitpea, doesn’t sit the same in the water or row quite as well. But she’s a good, solid craft and, especially for a boat that only took 5 days (instead of the 9 months the last one took us), we’re content.
I told you I didn’t want to live through the loss it took to make this story. That I’d give up the story in a moment to avoid the loss. I think I still feel the same (though the story is a good one, yes?) but I can’t help but feel proud of my family and all our hard work and grateful for all who helped us hit this curve ball right out of the park.

No, we didn't give our youngest Grey Goose Vodka:-)

Before heading off to see The Hobbit, we celebrated with dinner at a local pizza place and toasted each other with the 1/2-off drinks. “To launching a boat!”

Day 6- Introducing…

After last night’s late night, this morning came early. Hannah is the only holdout against the cold we’re passing around. Bryan woke up sounding awful and feeling worse (and I’d managed to lose my voice in the night), but after some coffee, he took off for the build site to sand down the worst of the bumps and runs in the epoxy. He told me his set-building friends in college regularly denied being carpenters or woodworkers. “This is wood-butchery,” he quoted. While it’s true we’ve taken several shortcuts that make his woodworking heart grimace, we’ve also accomplished an amazing amount in the last few days. And paint covers a multitude of sins.
The girls and I showed up just in time to start painting.We wiped the sanding dust off with wet rags.

Bryan applied the ceremonial first brushstroke and then we left the girls working while we ran to the market around the corner on a “hydration/floatation run.” (We plan to remove the seats and add extra floatation when we get enough bottles saved up.)

“Let us know when you’re going to move your boat,” our friend in the info-booth called out “We’ll get some nice strong men to help you!” It’s so heartening to have developed such a delightful community of local encouragers in the last few days.

By the time we finished painting the stern, the bow was dry. In this warm weather, we knew it wouldn’t be long before we could apply another coat.
It’s not all hard work. Here, Bryan makes sure that Hannah doesn’t miss out on being harassed by immature boys she would know if she was attending middle school this year.

After a few minutes of literally watching paint dry…

…we walked to a nearby grocery store and took our picnic lunch back to the marina patio.
After lunch, we painted the second coat of red, waited a few minutes until the paint was barely dry, flipped the dinghy, and painted the interior. While the crew painted the second coat of red, I walked up to the hardware store for more brushes. We could fill our wash bucket from the shop as much as we wanted (they service a desalination plant, remember?) but we weren’t sure we would ever be able to get all the red paint out of the brushes we had.

I brought back one larger brush, for the big spaces, and 2 smaller brushes for the tight corners. It seemed like a good idea until I got back and realized our big brush didn’t fit into the can or the cups we were using as paint trays. Bryan thought for a moment, grabbed a pair of scissors, and made me a tray from an old Pepsi bottle. He and Meira came up with the idea for the base, so I could set it down without it rolling away. Perfect!

Just as we finished the first interior coat, our friend from the marina showed up to check on our progress.

We are so grateful for all he and the rest of the marina staff have done for us. Security, restaurant recommendations, lot space, friendly encouragement—they went above and beyond anything we could have expected. Later in the day, our friend caught me on the sidewalk and handed me tickets to take the girls to see The Hobbit. We’d mentioned that we planned to take them as an early Christmas present/reward for all the hard work and he said he was so inspired by our family dynamic and the girls’ great attitudes, he wanted to help make that happen. (If you’re ever looking for a marina in Cabo…have I got a recommendation for you!)

The girls and I headed back to the big boat for a quick break while Bryan picked up our site and hung out near our suddenly vulnerable dinghy. We hadn’t been too worried about security when the boat was half-finished But now, with wet paint surrounding the cable-lock attachment point, we didn’t want to take any chances that we’d lose another tender! (Bryan was only half joking when he said he might sleep there tonight. We left the boat cable-locked to the foundation of the building, though, and there are security guards all around. I think we’re good.)
We met back at the build site about 5pm, hoping to finish the last coat of paint in the daylight. The interior took much more paint the the exterior, so we started by painting the most obvious surfaces and anything that looked really ugly after the first coat. We kept at it, though, scraping the last paint from our cups and the can and had enough left over, Bryan took a few minutes to do this:

If there was any question why we're a bit sore...this picture solves the mystery

Introducing Rover, T(ender)/T(o) LiLo

Before we had Splitpea, when we used a borrowed, nameless dinghy, Bryan used the moniker Rover whenever he went to shore alone. “LiLo, this is Rover, over,” he’d call. And he always thought it would be a fun name for a dinghy. 17 years of marriage has taught me that if Bryan ever has a strong opinion about something, I’ll never regret going along with it. Plus, though the girls and I make great crew—hardworking, and up for (almost) anything—there’s no way this boat would have even been considered if it hadn’t been for Bryan, his knowledge, creativity, and chutzpah. The new dinghy definitely belongs to all of us, but I think she may like him best:-) And yes, she’s still a she despite the masculine name. Do I have to explain why we painted her red?
In the celebratory aftermath of finishing the last brushstrokes, Hannah counted days of work. "Five days!" she said. "We beat God!" We reminded her that he had a whole universe to create and she countered by reminding us that he could just speak it into existence; we had to actually work for this creation. We'll call it a draw:-)

Tomorrow, we plan to carry Rover to the boat ramp and row her the few feet to LiLo before heading off to watch The Hobbit. We’re hoping the next day, weather permitting, to tear ourselves away from the people we’ve grown to love and make the 2-day jump to Mazatlan in time for Christmas. I’ll try to post again tomorrow, with pictures of the rope trim and oarlocks installed (“The dinghy’s done,” Bryan says. “The rest of the work is after-market upgrades.”) and maybe a few of the mayhem we cause carrying the boat through town.

I wish you could all be here for the launch. So many of you have helped in so many ways. We’re not oblivious; we know this plan was outrageous and unlikely. But we have felt buoyed up by our community, financially and emotionally, every step of the way. I can hardly believe we pulled it off. Thank you.

Day 5

Bryan once read that the most important tool in a boatbuilder’s arsenal is a good pondering chair in which to sit when solving a problem or recovering from a mistake. So last night we went back to the boat, but we mostly sat around on the ground trying to plan a way around our gunwale problem (it’s pronounced “gunnels,” by the way. No whales were injured in the building of this dinghy:-) We weren’t sure if we could finish the gunwales, the interior seats and the last of the fiberglass all in one day, but if we tried to work any later into the night, we were only going to make things worse.

This morning, Bryan went up to the build site first thing and the girls and I followed a few minutes later. First, we worked a bit on the interior seats and compartments, gluing the supports into place with thickened epoxy. We ran out of wood flour, our regular thickener, so I dug out my precious supply of white whole wheat flour and donated some to the cause. We mix it in “until it looks appetizing,” Bryan says, until it’s the consistency of peanut butter. Then we spread it on the pieces and clamp in place. The thickener is essential on vertical planes, for obvious reasons.
Next we tackled the recalcitrant gunwales. Since they wouldn’t bend properly on the outside of the boat, we decided to glue them in section on the inside. Some boat designs use the gunwales to help shape the boat panels into place, but we have internal frames to do that job. The gunwales here are just for added strength, and cutting them in pieces wouldn’t affect that. Bryan measured and cut all the pieces, and I mixed epoxy to order. The fast curing epoxy starts getting unworkable right away, especially in the warm temperatures here. We worked fast to get each section clamped into place. Then, because we are sincerely low on clamps, we screwed the gunwales in from the outside of the boat and retrieved the clamps for use in the next section.

For comparison, here’s a shot of the day we glued the gunwales onto Splitpea.

Bryan had seen some natural rope in one of the stores he’s been in this week. This afternoon, he managed to find it again and we bought some, hopefully enough to line the upper edge of the boat and cover all the messy screws (now you know our secret…don’t tell!) Bryan ordered 7 meters but the man behind the counter just counted off arm lengths of rope. “Mexican meters,” he said, grinning.
By the time the gunwales were done, Bryan was ready for a “break.” By which I mean, a walk to the fiberglass store and a lunch run. We stayed behind and I coated every remaining bare surface with a layer of waterproofing epoxy. We’d had to scavenge gloves from friends and the shop workers, so I didn’t have the girls join in. They’ve been such troopers about this whole thing, cheerfully jumping in when they can and patiently waiting (e-books help!) when they can’t. It took Bryan a long time to get back (he was running all over town looking for more gloves!) but after lunch, we installed the last gunwale, flipped the dinghy, patched in the last of the fiberglass, and installed the skeg—the little keel-looking thing that will help the boat track well in the water.

Oh, and we installed some of our scavenged “floatation devices. I even tossed in a recently emptied bottle of saline from my contacts and Hannah laughed and laughed at the thought that it was part of our floatation solution. We didn’t have quite enough to fill the compartment, but on his errands today, Bryan located the floatation motherlode, an empty lot with a huge pile of drink bottles. Tomorrow when we need a break, we’ll go pilfer a few and add them in.

After the fiberglass work, the dinghy needed a few hours to dry. Hannah hung out on the boat, while we did laundry and Meira played in the pool. Then in the evening, we left the girls on the boat and Bryan and I went back to the build site, hoping to get everything ready for painting tomorrow. The evening shift went very smoothly. Yesterday was definitely the slump day, but today felt like we were speeding toward the finish. We installed the last seats and finished the last coat of epoxy on the new fiberglass and skeg. We worked by headlamp and the light of the rising full moon. Maybe it’s not your traditional romantic trip to Cabo, but it’s not without it’s wonders if we stop to pay attention. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
That means tomorrow  (today, I guess…it’s after midnight as I type) we only have to sand, paint (2 coats inside and 2 coats outside) and screw on the rope and finishing hardware. 1 day of prep and a 5 day build? We might make it.