We're looking for the trash fence...

After our successful fall navigation of the west coast of the United States, winter and spring cruise of Mexico, and summer Land Yacht tour of the United States we've decided we're ready and excited to re-engage in our careers. We own nothing but Deep Playa, her contents and a couple of boxes at our Moms' houses. We have no storage unit full of junk and no property to which we need to return. So the obvious first question is where to do want to live?

We’ve given a lot of thought to how we’ve been living and here’s what we’ve learned.

• We love the ocean even more than we did in Seattle. The seabirds, the whales, the fish. Crystal clear, green warm waters. Long beaches to run on. All amazing!
• There is a lot to be said for amazing weather. Although, Patrick could definitely handle some cold crappy weather every once in a while.
• We have grown to love this more relaxed cruising lifestyle.
• Cute dusty Mexican towns are nice to visit, especially if there is surf, but we get bored living there.
• As in our house, in our condo and on the boat, we continue to enjoy living in a simple space with modest amounts “stuff”.
• We miss the variety of dining and entertainment options modern US cities brought to our lives. Coastal Mexico is very homogenous.
• We miss the Asian influences of Seattle. Especially the food!
• Living at anchor can be isolating, inconvenient and it’s hard to sleep more often than you’d think.
• We miss the convenience land mobility brings to life. Being able to jump on the scooter or a car and go someplace or get something.
• We need a bed which can be accessed from the sides, so one person isn’t crawling over the other to enter and exit.
• We miss having a tinker space or workshop to work on geeky stuff and projects.
• Dawn needs to be able run when she wants and go to the gym.
• We eat a lot of veggies and miss the variety and high-quality of produce available in the US.
• Dawn misses a full size kitchen and pantry full of options.
• Long hot showers with water pressure so strong you can barely stand-up.
• We miss really good wine. And Matty won’t bring us any!
• We miss hoppy IPAs. And Russian River Brewing won’t bring us some Pliny!
• We miss friends our own age. We miss younger friends. We miss geeks. We miss our kind of weirdos. We miss the depth of friendships and conversations you get from living in one place. We miss having a place to host our friends.
• We miss the collaboration and excitement that a great job brings to life. Working together with others to make something new. Growing our own skills. Mentoring others and seeing them grow.

With all that in mind, we started to think about where to live and really the only two coastal cities with adequate job options and access to the Ocean are San Diego and Honolulu. Ultimately, while Honolulu may be more complicated logistically and have a smaller job market, we think the lifestyle which is offered there is more appealing. We also have friends who live there already which is a huge bonus.

Will we sail to Hawaii? Living in a marina again would be fun. Living in a marina offsets a lot of the “living on the hook” inconveniences. But, in our mind, Hawaii is not is not a great place to live aboard a sailboat while working. The day and weekend trips seem limited and we’re not day sailors or racers. We think a power boat or catamaran would be more ideal in Hawaiian waters. It’s not a done deal, but we’re looking into selling Deep Playa here in Mexico. We have yet to meet with a broker, but we’re gathering information and looking into our options. It might turn out to be better to take the boat up to San Diego. We don’t know enough yet to make that decision. If we go to San Diego instead of Honolulu then living aboard is a more viable option and one we’d consider. It would be very hard to say goodbye to Deep Playa, but it’s just as exciting to think about what we’re going to do next and to get on with doing it.

So there it all is. We’re getting jobs. Honolulu is our favorite option. We don’t plan to take the boat to Honolulu. We have no precise timeline, but we definitely won’t be in Mexico for the summer.

Dawn and I have been selling off, donating, gifting and throwing out everything at the condo which won’t go with us to the boat. For the past week we’ve had no place to sit but the floor and after tonight we will no longer have a bed. So that pretty much makes it official, as of tonight we’re officially moving aboard Deep Playa!

Part of moving aboard means making sure Deep Playa isn’t just a boat, but a seaworthy cozy home. Dawn has been doing the lion share of these projects; converting the shelves in the v-berth to cabinets, adding a cabinet at the head of the v-berth, lining the hanging locker with cedar, and testing out her new office (see pic at left).

Over the past few years, a non-trivial amount of blood has been lost, a LOT of sweat has been wiped from our brows and even a few tears from our cheeks and it feels damn good to say this so I’ll say it again (in caps even)…

WE ARE LIVEABOARDS !

Dawn and I held a Yard Sale this weekend to get rid of the stuff we’ve accumulated since we sold the house and moved into the condo bout 7 years (?? – Dawn knows) ago as well as stuff we’ve had forever but just doesn’t make sense to take on the boat. Prior to the big garage sale we also let our friends come over and get first dibs on things and immediately we were left with pretty much nothing to sit on! I had initially thought this was going to take a little longer, but all of a sudden I realized, we’re probably going to be liveaboards in a week or so!!

After the yard sale we took a very full car load of stuff to Goodwill and a stack of computer stuff to InterConnection being mindful to get receipt slips so we can itemize our deductions in our 2011 taxes.

We still have a pile of “valuable” designer or “cool” clothes stack of sporting good stuff, a desk and a bedroom set, that we’re taking to Buffalo Exchange, 2nd Base and listing on Craig’s List respectively.

It’s nice to get rid of this stuff, but man will I miss those boots!

I just got an email announcing new pricing:

While our last rate change was in 2007, in order to maintain our high level of customer service and upgraded technology infrastructure, certain adjustments will occur on October 10th.  The new rate schedule applies to prepaid fill-the-box photo scanning (\$149.95) and some standard photo scanning services (\$64.95 to scan up to 1,000 photos).  Always save 10% (up to \$25 by entering this promo code on the order page: TWITTER.

Click here to order by October 10th at the current rates!

When we bought Deep Playa there was a file box of manuals and receipts which were almost fused together into a single paper brick. Paper and moist environments don’t mix so well. Since then I’ve been making progress on scanning all of those documents and where it makes sense I put them up on the web for all to have was drop.io/deepplaya. [NOTE: Drop.io is no more.]

Well one of the things we wanted to keep at hand but not take with us were all of the pre-digital photos that I have from my childhood that my mom sent me when I turned 30 as well as a bunch of things from college, about 1800 photos! I seriously though this would cost about \$1000 or at least \$500. Nope… only \$124.95 !!

www.ScanMyPhotos.com will scan all the photos you can fit in their box (roughly a shoebox) for \$124.95! You have to sort them all by size band them together and they just scan them all in size order. The send you a folded box and a shipping label in a US Postal Service envelope you unfold the box, tape it up fill it full and slap on the US Postal shipping label. They were not the highest quality scans of photos I’ve ever seen, but these were cheesy vacation photos from 1971-1981 on pretty crappy print paper anyway so it’s not like we were archiving artwork. The scans all look respectable and I’m happy that now I can take all my pics with me on the boat in digital format and send the originals back to mom for safe keeping. I highly recommend www.ScanMyPhotos.com !