This month, June is the 2 year mark for us being underway from our home at Columbia River Yacht Club in Portland Oregon. 
When we started this adventure, we thought that this 2 year mark we would be close to being done….but that isn’t the case. Our plans have adjusted multiple times, as they should when things happen. But we are so happy they did because we would not have experienced some places that we were not planning on going.
This first disruption of our plans was the overhaul in the Puerto Vallarta, Mexico Shipyard at Opequimar. It took many more weeks than we anticipated. They did a great job but the length of time made us change our plans. We decided to head north up to the Sea of Cortez for the summer. And what a great time we had! We would go back for sure and maybe someday we will do that. It was one of the best times we had.
One of the other best times/places, that was unexpected, was when we hit the San Blas Islands on the Caribbean Sea side of Panama. This was definitely in our plans but we were totally surprised by the level of friendliness from the native Guna Indians. We were blessed to have them share parts of their lives with us and we will never forget this memory. Also the beauty of the land and the hardship these people live every day to just survive is amazing. We were blessed to be able to experience it.
Now we had many small change in plans and we really only plan out the next stop just before leaving the current one. But the Sea of Cortez was a major change to our plans. One of the other major changes to the plan was just recently when the Covid 19 hit the world. We were in Jamaica and we planned on going to Turks and Caicos and had family coming to join us. Well, of course that didn’t happen and we decided to undertake the longest run we had ever done, 4 days, alone with no crew. We made it safely to Florida and were glad to be in the US during these trying times.
We are frequently asked by people we meet about the roughest weather or worst storms. Of course you will all remember our cruise from Costa Rica to Panama, Our most TERRORIZING Cruise ever. We tell this story often to people we meet along the way, with wide eyes watching us as we point to the top of the fly bridge where the sea water attacked me in the middle of the night. This was a life changing event for me as a sailor and I truly respect the sea as it has its own agenda.
Of course, we are always doing repairs on the boat, well, I guess I should say Dan is always doing repairs. At least the repairs are being done in exotic locations, right? Because repairs are so much of our energy, to keep moving and be safe I asked Dan what his most concerning repair was and why. This repair issue was the overheating of our main generator. It actually had two issues, but we did not know that at the time.
Being that the overheating was in our main generator and it was old, we had a bit of concern and needed it fixed quickly. We were in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico at the time, which adds to the complexity if parts are needed. The first issue was a clogged and leaking heat exchanger. It was very troublesome because it was difficult to disassemble, being old & rusty and was hard to get it unfastened in a very tight location. Eventually he was successful, but the part had to be ordered from Cook Engines in the US and then have it shipped. Because it was heavy and expensive part, we paid bucks! Customs in foreign countries can hit you hard. The second issue was found a couple days later after the heat exchanger was replaced. We had a worn out and clogged exhaust mixing elbow. The sea water passage had become clogged, limiting the flow which causes more overheating. We had lost our main generator again. But this time we had friends coming down and they brought the part with them in their luggage and helped Dan fix the elbow. All of this was a major concern because this was our main generator wired to our inverter. We had to use our alternate generator which limited us to 50 amps max.
The winner of best pictures is a slam dunk on “Sunsets & Sunrises”. So many I may need to create a picture book with all these pictures to put on my coffee table, someday!
I was not sure how to put these two years into a overall blog when there was just so much to talk about, So I thought I would put the last 2 years into a list of data points.
- 730 days/2 years living aboard Angelique
- 8,386 nautical miles
- 7 countries visited
- Cruised past 6 countries without stopping
- 12 Scuba/snorkels dives – not enough times, for sure!
- 1 new dinghy
- 1 haul out/overhaul
- 5 times we used 2 anchors – bad holding & bad wind/wave direction
- 3 times major direction change in plans
- 2 marina power failures while gone off of the boat – not fun!
- 18 airline tickets purchased, traveled away from boat
- 1 pandemic
- 2 intruders
- 1 awesome supermoon
- 100’s of amazing sunset/sunrise pictures
- 40+ dolphin sightings
- 1000+ hours fixing & maintaining stuff
- 24 engine oil changes
- 1 stolen phone
- 3 Airbnb’s – during shipyard work
- 50 different visits from our friends/family
- 4 different visits from Ken and Cheryl – Our good friends
- 6 different visits from our kids, Kylie, Chase & Mitch
- 2 Hired hands – who were brothers
- 2 Navy football games attended – different cities
- 40+ motorcycle rides
- 48 blog posts about our adventures
- 75+ books read (hard, on-line & audio)
- 100+ bicycle rides
- 60+ Uber and taxi rides
- 27 nights Angela spent on boat without Dan
- So many new boating friends/acquaintances
- 2 very grateful and blessed owners of Angelique
As we reflect back on the past 2 years living aboard our Motor Yacht, Angelique, we are amazed at how far we have traveled, IN OUR OWN BOAT! So many awesome memories we have and we are EXTREMELY GRATEFUL that I have been writing them all down in this blog. Also, incredibly grateful to our friends and family that have joined us and helped with moving the boat in those times we needed it. And of course, all the people we met along the way, which are now new friends with which we will hopefully keep in touch.
I hope that if this is something you are interested in doing, that you do it! Yes there are rough times, lots of maintenance and repairs. But what an adventure you will live and relive as you remember what you accomplished.
First, getting into the country is different than traveling inside of the US. We have to check in at customs & immigration. This requires us to go to the national office, sometimes close by and sometimes not. We also may be required to visit a bank, to pay the immigration office, occasionally they do not take cash. You would need to pay the bill at the bank and bring back a receipt. Then we would need to head to the Port Captain’s office to check into the local port. Sometimes these were not physically close and required a taxi or the marina’s office folks to cart us around. In some countries like Costa Rica & Panama we hired an agent to get us checked in/out. This was very valuable when we started reading the complications of moving from place to place in these two countries. Mexico is cheaper and simpler.
When we go to these offices we take all our critical documents needed to check in. Dan created a “Boat Book” with plastic sleeves for sliding in and out all the documents. This book holds all the vital paperwork needed to get in and show a customs/immigrations officers & Port Captain’s office. We are also often asked for copies of our documents and have a small printer we can use to make extra copies.
You “should not” expect to see the same type of cities, roads, houses, restaurants, grocery stores, laws, taxis, sidewalks, attitudes, approach, style of speaking etc, etc, etc. Mexicans are much more about relationship building. They want to have a nice greeting before they get into the topic in question. Americans, right to the point! Understanding this is critical to building relationship and getting what you need & want. They are different and you should try and understand the uniqueness of their culture. At the shipyard in Puerto Vallarta, we had OUTSTANDING quality of work, very affordable pricing due to using a personally recommended project manager, who was a great communicator, super attentive, involving family members in their business. This was able to work because we accepted how they did business in a slow, relationship, family, and holiday considered way.
Another way to enjoy the experience is to learn the language. Spanish isn’t that hard. Neither Dan or I knew any Spanish, but worked hard to learn what we could as we went along. Now, we certainly can’t hold conversations, but we learned how to ask questions, greeting, small words that helped us along the way. It helps with the locals valuing you and your visit, if at least try and speak some spanish. Of course you can take a class, use an app – Duolingo and practice as often as you can.
For fun you might want to consider bringing kayaks, paddle boards, bicycles, snorkels gear, scuba gear, games and playing cards, & DVD movies. Also if you plan on anchoring out and visiting islands as we did up in the Sea of Cortez, you should consider a smaller lightweight dinghy that you can pull up on the sand. This is one mistake we made, ours is too heavy to haul up on a beach.
Getting Cash is an interesting issue and I do recommend getting Mexican Pesos, you will need them. Yes you can use your Credit Card at restaurants, grocery stores, etc. but taking a taxi, tipping, farmers market, street vendors, a quick drink, you need cash. What I recommend is to use your debit card in a machine to get cash. Yes, you will be charged a fee and the conversion rate at the moment in time that you get the cash. But this is the easiest and best exchange rate. PLEASE use a debit machine attached to a local bank and be aware that there are thieves that can scan your card if you are not careful. You need to pay attention to the fee and the conversion rate, which are both set by the owner of the machine. The fee is a one time transaction fee, so pull out as many Pesos as the machine will allow in one transaction. All machines we went to have an option for “english”. That was nice.
Mexico is one of our most favorite places to visit/stay. We were in Mexico for a 1 year+ in many different areas. I’m sure we will be back. Dan and I feel Mexico is a very safe place to be. As long as you are aware of your surroundings, just like in the US. Pay attention and enjoy. I often went places by myself, either on a shuttle bus, taxi or Uber. (Available in the bigger cities). I only once felt a little uncomfortable. NOW there are cities where there is a bit of unrest, like Acapulco, so I would not act the same in this city and we were extremely careful there.
We also went to the Panama Canal Museum and walked around town. We were so very lucky to have her, we would recommend her to anyone… (let us know if you need her contact info) We were also able to watch the Super Bowl in a restaurant near the marina too! We had a good stay in our expensive marina.
You are charged to go through the canal based on the length of your vessel. We knew it would be expensive because Panama raised the cost of the transit effective January 1st, 2020. You are also required to have 4 people on board to handle lines and fenders. We had Ken, Cheryl and myself. Dan was the Captain and not counted as a line handler. We had planned to have one of Dan’s friends from the Naval Academy aboard, Scott and his wife Lauri. We were really sad that Lauri got sick and they were not able to make the trip. We send both of them our prayers, hoping she gets well soon. Rogelio, our agent, found 1 line handler for us. John 
was an experienced line-handler with the canal transit and helped greatly with what we should expect.
We started off with the water high, almost level with the lock walls. Rather then starting at a low point and being protected by the lock walls. The wind did impact us as we were attempting to tie off on the Tugboat, but we got some lines over and for them to help us tie off to them. (you can see in the picture the Tug crew were not extremely helpful) Then the large freighter was tied behind us. When the water went down, the employees stopped it and took it back up. We weren’t sure what happened at first but the large freighter had big anchors hanging out on the sides of his bow. His tie off in the lock wasn’t perfectly even and he was going to hit the wall, so up we went. They pulled a bit with the mules which evened it out a bit, then back down we went. 
