Returning home
Our journey back to living on the water
We were finally on our way home. It was a long time away from our life on the water and we were looking forward to our reunion. However, we knew there was going to be a lot of work to do to get our floating home off the desert floor and back into the water into ship shape!
It was over 100 degrees in the Sonora desert and after spending time in Alaska and San Francisco, that was a huge change for our bodies. We got to our boat, and just climbing the ladder left me breathless! We were glad to be back to do the work, but we didn’t realize how hard it was going to be to exert ourselves in such extreme heat.
Then we couldn’t believe our eyes! Our friends Scott and Joanne from Fundango were in the area to buy a parasail from a sailor who was on the hard in the same boatyard as ours. We met them on the dock in Marina Fonatur Guaymas. It was so good to see them. They got a slip and we soon found ourselves sipping limeade under the shade of their wonderful bimini. We all moved slowly together. They also volunteered to help us the next day with getting our boat ready to be hauled back into the water. We took them up on their offer, hook, line and sinker!
It took a while to get the boat cover off, folded and stored in the heat. We also had to take all the aluminum foil off the hatch covers and stainless. We had to take the backstay off which was the tricky part. The reason for that was so the traveler could lift Salacia to move us. Again, we worked slowly but consistently and with the help from our friends, and we got it done.
The next day we got to the boat early and watched the boat get lifted back into the water. We instantly felt more relaxed. We were also able to get a slip at Marina Fonatur right next to Fundango. We had a whole list of projects but first we had to haul Salacia out again at Marina Fonatur in Guaymas so we could get the bottom of our hull repainted with anti-foul paint that we brought with us from the US. That took no more than three days.
In the evenings, when the heat finally broke, we walked into town for dinner and afterwards a stroll on the Malècon. It was delightful to see all the families come out of their shelters too to play. One Sunday evening there was a fair and we all enjoyed an authentic mexican meal together with homemade empanadas, burritos and tacos with native sauces. The food was really good. The chef was from the state of Oaxaca. They talked us into each having a coconut water drink. We thought it would be like the coconut water we are use to from the states but this one had a lot of sugar in it, and it was decadent! What a rich ending to a rich meal. We were glad to be walking again.
We stayed in a small hotel in San Carlos where our friends, Patty and Tom, were also staying because their boat was in the yard there. We loved the hotel because it was quiet, small, humble with a small kitchen and very clean. It was $40 a night cash with no additional fees and the longer we stayed the less expensive per night it became. It ended up being $25 a night. What was really great about it was the lower price was retroactive to when we first arrived. We were so comfortable there with the air-conditioning that we weren’t sure when we would leave. Our friends, John and Marcy, have been there over a month now and their rate is now $15 a night. You can’t beat these prices! I wish it was the same for the car rental but that ended up being the same rate we would get in the US.
We commuted to Guaymas every morning about a 35 minute drive, stopping at the grocery store on the way to get a bag of ice so we could have limeade every day. We drank so much of it every day to keep us hydrated in the desert heat. Working on the boat demanded a lot of labor.
Every night we would return to San Carlos and have dinner with our friends Patty and Tom and also Joanne and Scott who eventually took their boat to the anchorage there. It was nice to have time with friends when we weren’t working. Patty and Tom were getting their boat ready for the water too.
Sometimes I woke up early and went for a sunrise walk to welcome the new day before it got too hot. It was beautiful and very quiet in the mornings. The landscape showed me what the area was like before all the development started in San Carlos.
Soon it was Peter’s birthday. I asked him what he wanted and he said he wanted to successfully install the new heat exchanger in our engine. It took him all day and at times I could see that he wanted to stop but he kept going until it was all done. It ended up being the most challenging project of all our list of projects because of how hard it was to get to the hardware that enabled him to remove the exchanger and then put in a new one.
We ended the day celebrating with our friends in San Carlos and I watched Peter glow from the joy of the project being a success. It was also a full moon that night and the harvest moon which made it special.
We met a couple, Michelle and Joe, on the dock who had been living on their sailboat (Soul Renegade) there for a year. They knew all the ins and outs of Guaymas including where to get the best supplies. They took us on an Sunday morning outing to the flea market in a town called Empalme. We strolled around and found some fresh veggies, meat and socks! We also picked up a couple of watermelons which were amazingly refreshing to eat in the heat! Our final stop was to pick up fresh fish from the local fish market supplied by most of the local fishermen. We bought fresh sea bass, shrimp and crab!
We also discovered that Joe and Michelle are from the East Coast. In fact, he’s from Wilmington, Delaware and she’s from Scranton, Pennsylvania which is close to where I grew up at Crystal Lake. Michelle and Joe had sailed all the way from the Chesapeake Bay to Panama where they wanted to jump across to the South Pacific. Then the pandemic hit and they ended up in Panama for three years! They shared so much information with us about their time in Panama. We were excited to listen to their stories and take copious notes. We now know that Panama is where we want to sail to after Mexico with a stop in Costa Rica.
Our time on the docks continued as we worked through all of our boat projects. I assisted Peter when I wasn’t working with clients via Zoom, which reminded me of our time in Brisbane, California at the marina when we were working on getting our boat ready to cruise. We enjoyed the people we met on the dock which became an instant neighborhood. For Joe’s birthday, we invited everyone to come aboard Salacia for homemade chili that Peter whipped up with the fresh meat from the market. We had just finished the majority of our boat projects and Salacia was presentable again. It felt awesome to celebrate all of it with our dock mates.
Then it was time to say our farewells - until we meet again. We untied the lines and headed over to San Carlos for our first anchor of the season. It felt awesome to be away from the hustle and bustle of city life and boat projects while floating around a calm anchorage. Well it wasn’t calm for long because there was a Norther in the forecast that weekend. Our friends John and Marcy had just arrived in San Carlos from Alaska and we didn’t want to miss catching up with them before we departed to cross the sea to cruise Baja California. We made it. We are happy to be back home on Salacia and living our life on the water.
Great to see you back on the boat!
Have a beautiful Thanksgiving down there!!!!
💜