Inspiration

Let’s agree, shall we, that my life is not better than yours?

Just because I am doing something unusual and writing about the best parts, doesn’t make it superior to the way you spend your days. Can we agree that all lives have hardship and joy?

I’m a writer, remember? So I pay attention to the words people use. Over and over, as we have spoken with others about our trip, one word comes up more than any others. “You’re an inspiration!” they say. Or, “I’m so inspired by your story.”

I don’t quite know what to do with that. It’s like getting called a hero for simply parenting my children. What else would I do? I’m trying to live my life on purpose, with attentiveness. The way that works out is like my wardrobe. It’s a mix of what I’ve been given and what I’ve chosen, but I layer it over a beating heart and yearning spirit, just like you.

Recently, I realized that the thing that annoys me the most about this statement is how it separates us.
It puts me on a false pedestal, sets me up as something unusual. Yes, our choice this year has been a bit unorthodox. But look beyond the details and you will find I’m not doing anything so different from many in my life who work to create beauty and to love well from the midst of their own unique mixture of talents, interests, and circumstances.

Sometimes being inspiring has a hint of fatalism, as if the speaker feels trapped in his or her life. I am not blind to the great privilege to choose this adventure. Until the day we sailed away from the dock, I wondered if something out of my control would happen to stop this long-awaited year. In other seasons, even in the midst of this one, I’ve had ruined dreams too, and fought against the frustration of unmet expectations on my way toward contentment.

Sometimes the statement hides darker hints of envy, romanticizing my days and overlooking the sacrifices we are making. Jealousy divides, sounds a battle cry I’m not willing to heed. I want to say, “Stop trying to live my life and get on with the work of yours!”

Today, I was reminded of the deeper root of inspiration.

To breathe.

To breathe in.

To give breath to.

Many times on this trip, the beauty took my breath away. A few times, the fear or sadness did the same. One day, it took conscious deep breathing, like the breath of hard labor, to stay open to the moment and not panic or shut down. Words from friends, hugs from my daughters, the boundless wonder of our world, the love of those who know me best—these inspire me. They give me strength to lean in on the hard days, breathing room to stop and worship.

So if, when you say “You’re an inspiration,” you mean that reading my words has helped you take a deep breath at times, helped you stop in awe and pay attention, I’m ok with that. And If you find my story breathing life into your own, buoying you up to live with more intention and gratefulness, I’ll gladly be your inspiration. So many of you are already mine.

Isla Isabel

Let me keep my distance, always, 
From those who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say, 
“Look!”  
And laugh in astonishment
And bow their heads
--Mary Oliver

The run to Isla Isabel was quick and quiet. Bryan took the first watch and then got some rest while I took over for a while. As we changed watches again, he joked that he’d hung the crescent moon just for me. He knows that a sliver of new moon is my favorite phase. At this latitude, the crescent hangs underneath the dim shadow of the full moon, which is just visible as a starless sphere in the brilliant night sky. I kept an eye out for fishermen (who turn their lights on and off unnervingly) and watched the glow of Mazatlan fade behind us. After the moon slipped below the horizon, I woke Bryan for his late evening watch. He had warned me that he might want to take a long night watch alone, so I wasn’t too surprised to wake up 6 hours later and find him still awake, enjoying the peace of a silent night at sea. He’d been working on a few projects through the night and wasn’t quite ready to be done. I went gladly back to bed and slept until the sun came up.

We’d made good time in the night. When I first peeked out in the morning, what I initially thought was a large boat low on the horizon was actually Isla Isabel. The approach was clear as indicated in our charts and guidebooks, but the charted location was off by several miles. The last hour or so, I stopped checking our navigation equipment and just pointed us toward the island itself and the pair of pinnacle rocks to its east sticking up from the ocean floor like a hitchhiker’s thumb. (Bryan claims this must be why the island wasn’t charted correctly; it keeps hitching a ride south with passing boats.)

As we approached the eastern shore, Valus Valeo shouted across to us from their spot in the eastern anchorage south of Las Monas, the pinnacles. When we were together on New Years Eve, we’d discussed our plans to head south about the same time, so we weren’t too surprised to see them here. They confirmed our plan to skip the southern anchorage. While slightly more protected than the eastern one, it is also surrounded by dangerous reefs, and underwater, an unmarked rock spire threatens keels and peace of mind.
The limpid water magnified the sand and rocks below as we motored slowly in, looking for a place to anchor. Bryan walked to the bow and waited for us to drift over a large patch of sand, then tossed the anchor over. After we set it well, he and the girls snorkeled our swing area looking for any rocks tall enough to bump our keel. We’d read a warning against getting complacent here; the sand is a thin layer over rock and in strong winds or current, we could easily drag. But the winds and seas were calm, so we relaxed a bit and celebrated the accomplishment of this long-awaited landfall.

Our friends from Valus Valeo motored over in their large dinghy and offered us a ride around to the southern anchorage. They zoomed around for a few minutes to give us time to dry off and pull together some fortification for an excursion.

We carefully balanced in their not-quite-overloaded dinghy and motored around the southeast point of the island. Another sailboat lay at anchor in the cove and before we left, two others had pulled in as well.

We landed the dinghy, hauled it safely up the beach. The wheels make it easier to haul up this heavy-duty inflatable with its large motor. Rover is lightweight and easy to launch and land, but it would have been a long row around! 

As we walked the beach past the fishing village, a panga full of eco-tourists landed nearby and we followed them and their bulging backpacks up the trail a few yards to an old research station, now a campsite for visitors and iguanas.
We spotted frigate birds, some still decked out for mating season,

some with new babies.

The air was humid and heavy with the scent of guano, though not overwhelmingly so. We marveled at the varied iguanas, all hanging out together in the sun.

We walked back through the fish camp to a trail leading up concrete steps into an inland valley. Bryan and I lagged behind until all sound receded but the sounds of the jungle, the prehistoric howls and clatter from the trees and the beat of powerful wings overhead.

We climbed another flight of steps up out of the valley and scrambled down the other side to a crater lake at the heart of the island. The small lake seemed stagnant, green with algae, but otherwise lifeless. A bird carcass lay on the bank near bare limbs of driftwood. We teased the girls, telling them not to toss rocks or disturb the monsters hiding in the gloomy water. Of course, they couldn’t resist, but the only monster we saw was a tiny hermit crab scuttling along his busy way.
The long night was catching up with all of us, so we hurried back to the dinghy and motored back to our boats. After dinner, the grown-ups from both boats were still pretty weary, but the girls wanted to get together, so Bryan rowed ours over to join theirs for an evening of games.
A couple of hours after dark, after the moon had set over the island and the girls were back from game night, Bryan took them out on deck for some spectacular star-gazing. Light pollution from even small population centers travels miles out to sea. But here, more than 30 miles out, the stars light up the night. I can’t remember why I didn’t join them, but I enjoyed listening to them exclaim as I got ready for bed below (alone…maybe that’s why:-) About 3 am, I awoke with middle-of-the-night clarity, the kind where you know right away you might as well give up on going back to sleep for a while. I got up to check our position. No problem: we were right where we’d been all day. I took a couple of dropboards out of the companionway and stepped out into the warm, still night. Familiar constellations swung in unfamiliar patterns. Orion, usually a friendly presence toward the southeast on winter evenings, hung by his feet on the western horizon. The abundance of stars, many typically too faint to see, made it difficult to pick out the well-known groupings. Our anchor light wobbled in a gentle circle somewhere east of Ursa Major. In just the starlight—no moon, no clouds, no hint of dawn—I stared at the pinnacles, the horizon to the east, the dark island sleeping out to sea.
I woke early to birdcalls outside and we spent the morning hypnotized by the swirl of countless birds overhead and the gentle sounds of surf and sea.

We packed a lunch and all our snorkel gear and rowed over to the beach. We’d heard there was a population of blue-footed boobies on this island, but hadn’t spotted a single blue foot on our first trip ashore. Apparently, they all hang out on the eastern beach! We’d arrived during mating season and we spotted some birds already brooding over eggs in the sand. Others were obviously still in the courting stages. We even witnessed a couple of pairs perform their pompous, ridiculous mating dance (not that humans have a leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing ridiculous mating dances!)

We went for a walk north up the beach and discovered several unusual formations where the sea had eroded the volcanic rock.

Slender skulls, hollow breastbones, and tiny bird vertebrae lay scattered in the sand.

We met a couple of wary iguanas and stepped carefully around so many groups of hermit crabs we became convinced they’ve been misunderstood all these years. They’re really quite the party animal!

Hannah wasn’t in the mood to snorkel (she spent the afternoon building this magnificent coral castle), but the rest of us suited up and jumped in.

The water was shallow quite a ways out, and a bit murky with surf-tossed sand, but several yards past the breakers, the bottom dropped away and the water cleared beautifully. We’d heard people describe good snorkeling as swimming in an aquarium, but until today, hadn’t had that kind of experience. We left the camera on shore, but got lots of great underwater video on our GoPro. Schools of fish of every color and size swam beneath us in all directions. Blue ones with yellow fins, silver ones with blue fins, green ones with white polka dots, and black ones with purple eyeshadow. My favorite was a slightly pudgy, iridescent black one with white dots and silly, floppy fins. I followed it for several minutes wondering what it thought of the slightly pudgy, orange and black creature above it, the one with the bright yellow foam jacket and those gangly, inefficient arms and legs.

I got out to dry off and rest up and Bryan and Meira soon followed. We sat near the dinghy and ate our lunch, trying not to freak out the nesting birds nearby.

We spoke idly of the wonder of the underwater universe. We’ve been floating over it for months now but are no closer to being a part of it. Our snorkels give us a mere glimpse into the aquatic life so foreign to our own.

Suddenly, a great splash out past our boat signaled the presence of humpback whales. Our track and timing has mimicked their annual migratory patterns, so we’ve seen quite a few recently. This day, as always, the sight was breathtaking. Two whales surfaced multiple times, breaching and crashing back into the water with great energy and commotion. They swam south of our boat, then turned back and came closer again. On days like this, it’s easy to hope the animals come a little bit nearer, dance a little bit longer. But they are not here for my pleasure or to put on a show for us. Especially for those of us raised with disney-fied animated animals, it’s easy to anthropomorphize these creatures instead of recognizing their utterly different instincts and thought processes. We remember it is a privilege to witness a few moments of their lives and we offer them the respect they deserve. 

After lunch, Bryan and I left the girls relaxing in the sand and walked down toward the rocky southern edge of the beach.

We met colonies of crabs, accidentally startling several into a leap from their rocky perch.

Their claws skittered across the black rocks as they moved sideways, then shifted—quick-as-a-blink—forwards or backwards. Red and blue shells stood out against the pitted stone and black shapes hung almost invisible on cliffs and under outcroppings.

Here, brown boobies with greenish beaks and feet stood out among their more prevalent blue-footed cousins.

Bryan climbed down the cliffs for a better view of the green and pink chitons. I found an easier way down and joined him in marveling at their hard, articulated shells and their textured circumference. Streaks of color in the black rock echoed their strange hues. 

The tidepools appeared lifeless, but a closer inspection revealed hundreds of miniscule snails, each with a slightly different shell pattern.

We couldn’t stop exclaiming at the dense abundance of life. We finally walked back to the girls and launched the dinghy across the rocks and through the surf. We rowed back to the boat in a daze of gratitude, reluctant but ready to move on. The girls went below and made chilaquiles for dinner, hollering out questions about the Spanish directions on the package while Bryan and I sat on deck in the fading light and gentle breeze, overwhelmed and humbled by the wealth of wonder.

Club Nautico and Stone Island

We all take turns dropping the dinghy. (It seems to be Bryan’s turn an awful lot of the time.) The trick is to swing it up and then out. You win if it stays dry inside.

The next day, we were excited to go to the central market, but it was Sunday and we didn’t want to walk all the way there only to find out that it was closed.
We poked around in the morning, on the boat and on the internet,

and then walked the mile into the main plaza. We found an ATM and wandered around the periphery of the fancy restaurants looking for something affordable. We spotted a wood oven in a back parking lot (controlled fire at a restaurant is a good sign) and walked around the block to find the front of the restaurant it was serving. It turned out to be another branch of La Mona, the pizza place we’d eaten at in New Mazatlan. We try to find unique places to eat along the way, but the price was right and the food was good, so we stopped in again. I was glad I’d learned how to order a 1/2 and 1/2 pizza!
On our way back, we stopped at a small store and picked up a few groceries and some pastries for breakfast. We grabbed a few for dessert too, and a quart of cold milk to drink with them.

Without refrigeration on the boat, cold milk is a special treat, but we have to drink it all right away. In fact, we have to finish most foods right away. Some leftovers keep OK (fried macaroni and cheese for breakfast is a new favorite), but other things don’t. Even crackers and cookies often go stale right away in the damp air. More than ever now, eating is a family occasion. If we open a package of oreos (here they come in small sleeves, like Ritz crackers) we just dole them out and eat them all. There are never any complaints. I’ve gotten good at judging how much to cook and Meira, who is still growing, is good at eating the last of the food from anybody’s plate. If you come to visit us, you might want to hold onto your plate while you eat:-)
Monday morning, we set off for the market. We rowed in, secured the dinghy, and walked the mile into Oldtown. We walked past the tour boat docks, through the industrial port and turned left into a residential area. We peeked through wrought iron fences into beautiful courtyards. Christmas decorations hung incongruously near tropical flowers. We scurried across a busy highway, across the median to the sidewalk on the other side. Each side of the highway was one-way only, but more than once, I saw a taxi reversing against the flow of traffic. Safely into the slender streets of Oldtown, we walked on north past the main plaza, across toward the cathedral, and into the market itself. The blocks around the market were a blaze of color and noise. Traffic fought street vendors for space on the roads and pedestrians zipped through the spaces between. The market itself, a city block of stalls and booths, was just as raucous.

Who needs automatic sprayers to keep your produce fresh when you’ve got a squirt bottle and an industrious little girl?

Clearly, bottle-cap checkers is serious business

We soon figured out the system—souvenirs in the stalls to the west; meat in the center; fruit, tortillas, and cheese to the east. Scattered here and there were lunch counters with tacos, hamburgers, and fresh drinks.

We wandered for a while and then found a place to eat. The tacos were amazing and the licuados (fresh fruit smoothies) even better.

We had to laugh when we saw the sign proclaiming careful cleanliness of ice and water displayed next to the live parakeet hanging over the blender.

We found a few things we’d been wanting—Hannah and I bought traditional dresses, Meira picked up a leather bracelet, and Bryan got a new belt.

I picked out some produce, cheese, and tortillas (we decided against buying one of the many whole pigs’ heads sitting out on ice.)

I braved the public restrooms, paid for a handful of toilet paper, and walked confidently…toward the men’s room. The attendant gestured frantically and I got the point.
On our way back, we stopped at a fabric store for some cloth to make a cockpit sunshade.

We’d poked our heads in on the way, but hadn’t wanted to carry several meters of stiff fabric around the crowded market. We found what we wanted, found someone to cut it for us and made it through the complicated process of checking out—pay here, but take your receipt around to the back of the counter to pick up your bagged fabric. Though we were never out of sight of the workers or our fabric, our receipts were double checked at each stop, first the cut slip, then the actual receipt. Someone stamped one of them with a big blue stamp and we were free to go.
In the US, I’m not much of a mall shopper. But I spend a lot of time at grocery stores and farmers markets to get the food and household goods my family needs, navigating the stores and aisles with others who are doing the same. Here, I really enjoy the challenge of shopping. Sometimes, I work to find what I want, other times I make do with what I can find. It takes extra math to figure out if we’re getting a good deal, and I’m getting a little better at haggling if it’s necessary (not as often as you might think). Though much about the process is different, the goal is the same, and a similar sort of community forms as I interact with the women at the cheese counter or bump elbows with the women at the produce stall. (Maybe, after months of navigating the male-heavy world of sailors, I’m just happy to relax in a primarily female circle again.) Back on the boat, we put away our finds, made a simple dinner of beans and rice (with cheese! What a treat!) and pulled out the laptop for family movie night.
The next morning, we loaded up the backpacks for a trip to the grocery store. The market had been nice, but we hadn’t done a real provisioning trip since San Diego and the shelves were getting a little bare. We tried to find the bus to Mega, a huge grocery superstore. A couple of taxi drivers overheard me asking for directions to the bus and when their price came down enough, we hopped aboard. We rode along the water, past a line of tiny, colorful stalls and beachside restaurants to the enormous Mega. We stood around in the entryway for a minute until we realized the store was upstairs. We grabbed a cart and wheeled it onto the flat escalator—no stairs, just a moving sidewalk at an angle. The wheels locked onto the surface (maybe a magnet? Maybe a belt brake or tip brake? Meira and Bryan investigated quickly but the ride wasn’t long enough to figure out the mechanism.)
We wandered the store until we were all tired and cranky, bought some food at the deli counter, and found some tables outside for a picnic. Just before we hopped into a taxi for the ride back, our friends from Valus Valeo came rushing up. They’d spotted us on their way up the escalator and came down to say hi. We made tentative plans to meet in the plaza after dinner for a New Years Eve dessert celebration.
We balanced our groceries in a golf cart taxi and rode back to the boat. The security guard opened the gate for us and the driver pulled through and backed up (very, very close!) to the steps at the top of the dinghy dock. We transferred the groceries to the dinghy, paid the driver, and rowed back to the boat, That night, we walked back into town. We were a little late getting started; a rain shower came through and we opted to wait it out. But we knew where we wanted to eat. On our walks, we kept passing a busy taqueria and we had plans to get some cheap food there before meeting our friends. We headed straight there and…it was closed for the holiday. As we walked around town, it seemed the same was true all over. Any cheap little restaurant was closed, the spendy ones on the plaza hadn’t opened yet—the  waiters were bustling about trying to protect the fancy table settings from the damp—and it was starting to rain again. We walked increasingly larger circles around the plaza, ducking under an overhang when the warm rain grew heavy. Every so often, we popped back into the plaza to see if our friends were waiting for us. We finally gave up on meeting them, but I didn’t feel quite ready to give up on the evening altogether and head back to the boat. It just felt like something else was about to happen.
All of a sudden, Bryan and I had the same idea—“What if we went..?” “How far is it to walk to…?”—we turned and headed for the waterfront development. Surely something there would be open. We walked the 7 blocks down to the water, amazed at the girls’ good attitudes despite the rain, their hunger, and the uncertainty. We emerged onto the main road near the beach toward the south end of all the development. We started to head north, but spotted some tables out on the sidewalk just a block or so to the south. We headed that way to check it out and were walking through, trying to see what was on the other side when—“LiLo!” Our friends from Valus Valeo had followed the same itinerary of wandering the plaza and finally heading for the beach. They’d found the restaurant a few minutes before and were just waiting for their food. We shoved another table up, shifted the already giggling girls to the spots at the end, and settled in for a effervescent evening. 

The long-suffering proprietor kicked us out a few minutes before 10. “It’s a special night for me too,” he said. Our friends caught a taxi to their end of town and we walked the sparkling streets back through the plaza (no longer dripping wet but full of lively energy) to the dinghy and rowed out to our quiet home. We rang in the new year by the ship’s clock but it was a few minutes fast, and as we were all brushing our teeth and getting ready for bed, we heard the city erupt with noise. We poked our heads out to see the fireworks and then cuddled up for “the best sleep all year.”
Our plan for the next day was a very short hop out the breakwater and around the other side to Stone Island. Bryan declared that Hannah would serve as captain for the 30 minute trip. She willingly accepted the challenge (and gratefully accepted a navigation briefing from me, the “navigation officer.”) We started the engine and Hannah started hauling in our rode. About 90 feet before the anchor broke the surface, the rode pulled up taut, caught on something on the bottom about 25 feet down. We tried winching. We tried slacking the rode and pulling it in again. We thought about calling a friend who dives. We tried motoring in circles, first this way, then that way. Every few minutes something would work its way loose and we could pull in a little more rode. For more than an hour, we hauled and motored and spun, like a kid twisting on a swing set, and finally…the rode was free. We spotted some grease marks where the line had been stuck and Bryan theorized that we’d been caught on an old engine block someone had tossed out to serve as a makeshift mooring. When we finally got to the actual anchor, it was set very firmly too. After all my concern about our anchor here, this was one place we weren’t going anywhere!
Hannah directed me (also the “communications officer”) to call traffic control and as soon as we received permission to leave, she guided LiLo safely out, past several unmarked rocks, into the anchorage on the other side. She worked with Bryan to get our anchor set well and gladly relinquished command of the vessel.
We’d planned to go to shore right away, but our fouled anchor had taken most of our time and all our energy. In the heat of the afternoon, Bryan and Meira jumped in over the side and snorkeled around the boat for a few minutes.

Hannah and I were happy to just sit aboard and take in the sights and sounds—swimmers and kayakers frolicking in the waves, pangas towing inflatable “banana boats” through the surf, horses cantering across the sand, and mariachi music floating out from the palapas on the shore.

The next morning, the view was completely changed. We couldn’t see anybody out on the beach and the tide was in so high, the waves were lapping at the beach-front restaurants. We tried to get a weather report from the cruisers’ radio net in the morning, but were too far away to pick up the weak signal. After breakfast, a trio from a neighboring boat came by on their swimming tour of the bay. They climbed up our swim ladder and sat in our cockpit for a short visit before heading off to another boat. They too had been hoping to get a weather forecast before heading out to Isla Isabel. We promised to relay across any info we got.
At low tide the day before, there had been a little slip of beach on the island in the bay, Isla Cardones. We planned to land Rover there on the sand for some snorkeling around the rocks.

Today, at high tide, we couldn’t see any sand, just sharp points of rock in the surf. We took our time getting ourselves together and by the time we were ready, Bryan could see a little sand through the binoculars. We dropped the dinghy and rowed over. The surf landing was easy and the snorkeling fun.

Vacationers in rented kayaks came and went on the tiny beach. Just as we were getting ready to head back, a couple in a tandem kayak had a rough surf landing. The woman pulled the kayak out of the water while the man waded in for some shoes trying to make their escape. When he got back to shore, he was missing his wedding ring. He didn’t know if he’d lost it wading or in the initial crash landing. We quickly offered our snorkel equipment for the search, but the sand was deep and the surf turbulent. Everyone knew the chances were slim to none. He waded out into the swell and Meira jumped in closer to shore while the rest of us waited on the beach for them to give up the nearly-hopeless endeavor. Just a couple of minutes later, Meira called out, “I think I found it!” Instead of sinking into the sand, the ring had settled into a crevice in the rock where her quick eyes spotted the sparkle. We rowed back out through the surf, energized by our part in making someone’s day.

We’d planned to leave that afternoon for Isla Isabel, an easy overnight run. The island is a world heritage site, protected for it’s abundant bird population, and nicknamed “The Galapagos of Mexico.” But the anchorages there aren’t very well protected and, because of the rocky bottom, are known for their iffy holding and tendency to snag anchors. We debated about staying another day to explore Isla de los Chivos (the island of the goats) and the palapas on the main beach. We’d just decided to head out anyway, when our swimming friends from the neighboring boat motored by on their way out to Isla Isabel too. We called over, “Did you ever hear the weather?” And they responded, “It’s blowing 8 knots right now.” With that good reminder that a weather forecast is not the same thing as the actual weather, we took off too, hoping to get a couple of calm days to explore the unique island we’d heard so much about.