We're looking for the trash fence...

Overall, we really enjoyed the Land Yacht and mostly I think we like the convenience of land. On the boat, when Dawn wants to go for run, she has to row the dinghy in, drag it up the beach, clean off her feet, put on her running shoes. A half-hour later the run begins. On the Land Yacht, you put your shoes on and you open the door and you run!

For me, I liked working on the RV. I liked crawling underneath it.  I liked not worrying it would sink if I did something wrong. It was awesome to have my older brother (and one time mechanic) help me work on the engine. I love me a project and our crappy motor home was definitely a project. ;-)

Shopping and dining was also a treat. That had to do with land, and also with being in the US. There’s just sooo much stuff in the US. It’s truly amazing how convenient the US is. Things which will take an entire day of busing  and walking to get in Mexico take 10 minutes in the US. You want something? Pull off the freeway and get it.

The only thing wrong with our gear and setup was not having a second vehicle. RV Parks are not located as close to things as you might have thought. They are frequently 20-30 miles away from the stuff you want to go to see. Our RV was small enough, we’d just drive it there and look for parking, but there were definitely times we sat tight at the RV Park because we didn't want to unhook the RV. We had bikes, but again frequently we were too far away for our comfy beach cruiser bikes to make that kind of trip reasonable. Public transportation was also a failure in most places. A small car, motorcycle or scooter would have been great. A scooter would have been limiting though since it cannot go freeway speeds. If we RV again, we’ll have a second vehicle.

The route we went on was not ideal. We drove across the US SW in August. The A/C in the engine didn't work. That sucked! Next US trip will be coastal or mountains for sure. I would also like to go back to the desert SW in the winter someday. From the Grand Canyon (loved!) to the Appalachians (Dollywood was fun) was mind numbing, tedious and devoid of things we found interesting. Don’t need to go back there!

It did teach us a few things about what we like and need in our personal space and our lifestyle. These will be things that we’ll use as we move forward with future adventures. As an adventure this was a good RV practice run.

We're trying to balance the bags and keep them under the weight limits. 15 hours till take-off!

Hey all, if you want to know more about the motorhome, the great US roadtrip of 2012 or any of that kind of stuff, I setup a separate blog for that.

https://deepplaya.com/LandYacht

All of the posts will some day get posted to the Deep Playa Facebook page and sent out as tweets @DeepPlaya.

UPDATE 2022: We don't do the Face or the Tweet any longer.

So for now, this will be last of the Land Yacht talk on this blog.

When we left La Cruz de Huanacaxtle and headed to Seattle, our plan was simple: Get a cheap RV and tour America by land. Route TBD. We had hoped we could find something vintage and cool looking which we might want to keep and then renovate in the future, but the quality of those rigs was so poor and we didn’t want to do a renovation up-front. That lead us to expand our search to the ”less-cool”, but more modern rigs. In the end we found a 1991 Winnebago Chieftain 25RC with a diesel engine. We were drawn to the diesel since we are more familiar with the care of a diesel from owning sv Deep Playa. The layout has a dedicated bunk, stand-up shower and a dedicated dinette and sitting area. These match with the way we live on the boat and that works pretty well.

Right now the RV is getting some brake works, tune-up, fluids changed, etc. We’ll hopefully be able to pick her up on Monday, give a deep cleaning and start moving in.

More adventures to come !!

In order to leave the boat for an extended period of time you higher someone to clean bottom and to watch after the boat (check dock lines, batteries, dehumidifier, etc) and you have to do a bunch of prep here’s a list of the things we’re doing to prep our boat:

• Go through all storage areas and look what can be removed from the boat
• Empty, Defrost and clean Refrigerator
• Clean shower sump
• Wipe down the interior with Vinegar
• Remove and clean Bimini
• Remove all perishable food stores
• Fill the water tanks and add Vinegar
• Leave zincs and wrench out for bottom cleaner
• Change engine oil, oil filter, primary fuel filter and Racor fuel filter
• Equalize batteries and add water
• Rinse surfboards and bags
• Giveaway gasoline
• Remove and clean all halyards and jib sheets
• Prep Generator for storage by draining fuel and spraying Fogging Oil into Spark plug, pull starter several times
• Mount and lock outboard on the stern
• Pickle the watermaker
• Change outboard Oil, flush engine, fog engine
• Have diver clean bottom put on new zincs and bag prop
• Put extra cleats on t-track
• Fill Diesel Tank and empty Diesel Jerry Cans
• Remove jib leads form t-track, clean and store
• Set Xantrex battery charger to HOT setting
• Repair mast boot tape
• Docklines and Fenders arranged for both sides
• Engine Coolant Topped Up
• Remove and clean sails and sail covers
• Wash, polish and wax topsides and cockpit
• Rinse bilge with fresh water
• Repair, clean and re-install Dodger
• Close all thru hulls
• Setup Dehumidifier to drain into the bilge
• Setup AC powered fan in salon
• Put AC Fan and Dehumidifer on their own extension cord direct to the dock
• Setup DC fans throughout boat

Busy busy busy… coming in a week earlier than we originally planned made this bearable because we could take days off when we were too hot and tired. There were other projects we worked on too, but they weren’t necessarily required, I’ll save those for later.

First off let me say we have no immediate plans or dates or tickets or destinations or anything yet, but I can tell you we will be touring the US this summer.

Dawn and I both had not been looking forward to going back to the Sea of Cortez for the summer and we were both not looking forward to the oppressive heat anywhere in Mexico. I was not excited about leaving the Pacific Coast of Mexico to go to the waveless and surfless Sea of Cortez. I’m not that into snorkeling and haven’t been very impressed with it anywhere (in the world) so I wasn’t excited about that as a trade-off. Dawn was probably more into that, but she (and I) were also a bit homesick for the US. Neither of us were very excited about making more overnight passages just to get North to avoid storm season. That’s kind of the why’s behind all this…

SO…. we decided we’re going to put the boat in Marina Riviera Nayarit (AKA Marina La Cruz) at some point this summer, fly somewhere in the US, buy a crappy RV or a Bus and do some visiting, see some places we might want to live, etc.. The official Storm Season is 1 June – 31 Oct, but we probably won’t leave Mexico till closer to July. Weather is still pretty benign, not yet oppressively hot or humid surf is still good and we will have some to-do’s to do to decommission the boat.

Anyway, just wanted to let y’all know that and when we know when and where we’re headed we will let you know!