Author Archives: A Family Afloat

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About A Family Afloat

I'm a mother of 3 amazing kids (currently 18, 13, and 8) and a wife of an amazing husband. We sailed our boat to Mexico with a sail plan of going around the world. In August, 2015 we cruised out "the Gate" of San Francisco and spent 2 months going down the coast of California and 2 years exploring Mexico. From Mexico, we sailed down to Costa Rica and Panama, then across to the Galapagos. We crossed the Pacific to French Polynesia In April, 2018, from the Galapagos. Now we have landed in New Zealand, have been based here for 2 years, and where we are open to stay for a little while...

9 month Tally 

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I’m not sure what’s going on, but a few of my posts didn’t post:

May 20th, 2016 marks our 9 months of being out cruising. We can’t believe so much time has past already. We are currently making our way up the Sea of Cortez with plans to leave the boat in Guaymas or San Carlos for the hottest three months of the summer. During that time we will be heading back to the United States as land nomads to travel around visiting friends and family. I will, however, be working as a Travel Nurse during that time to cover the expenses we manage to summon over the last few months. Here’s the latest and greatest….

9 months out tally count/costs for days anchored, days moored, days docked, and how much we’ve spent on each of those. And the good old unexpected expenses, yippee:
230 days anchored (all free except the days spent in Morro Bay)
4 days moored 
28 days Docked (14 of which were free with our YC reciprocal) 
Paid $: Mooring $40 (Morro Bay YC)
              Docked $105 (Ensenada’s Baja Naval Marina), $96 (La Cruz for furler work), $235        (Marina Mazatlán- see post)
              Dingy Dock: $15 (Cabo San Lucas), $4 (La Cruz), $4 (La Paz)

              Anchored $159 (Morro Bay Guest Anchorge) 

Fuel consumption for 9 months (85 gal diesel for Shawnigan and 6 gal of gas for dinghy) = ~    $360 
Mexico check in expenses in Ensenada: $105 for passport/tourists cards, $256 for Port Captain fees, $60 for TIP card, and $45 for fishing license.
I still haven’t been too good with figuring how much we spend on food. I’m guessing we spend around $500 a month. We’re not eating out all the time, but we aren’t living on beans and rice either. I will say that Costco in Mexico is not much cheaper than it is in The States. 

Big ticket items that were not anticipated: 
replacing our windvane with a new hydrovane. Let’s just say >$5,000 . 

replacing our windlass. Another $2500! (See our 6 month tally post for more on this)

Switching over to a harken furling set up from our previous Hank-On. $2,300 plus $550 in sail work to go with the furler. 

Plus another $275 for me to fly the old windvane up to the states to try to sell from there vs down in Mexico.

Then another $400 for emergency haul out and engine intake repairs in Mazatlán. 

Yikes! Seriously….that’s over our yearly budget of $12,000! Thank god for tax returns and an upcoming Travel job! Hopefully that will hold us over for a while as far as big ticket projects on the boat go. Oh and while I’m at it, we still have our previous Aries Windvane for sale… Contact us if interested! 



Above: Isla San Francisco with the Sierra de la Gigante range of Baja California Sur in the background

Summer in the States: Impending doom and excitedness all at once!

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We are crossing the Sea of Cortez again, heading over to San Carlos, to find a spot for our boat during the summer. 

Yes, we are leaving the boat for the summer. After all the unexpected expenses and the close proximity to the US for income, we chose to take the opportunity to escape the summer heat of Mexico and land travel to the states. 

I recently lined up a Travel Nurse position at UCSF for 13 weeks. I start at the end of June. This pushed our time in the Sea of Cortez a little faster than we hoped for, but you gotta take what you can get. Once we get to San Carlos, we’ll get the boat packed up and ready to leave it alone for a few months. 

Our plan is to take the 10-12 hour bus up to Phoenix from San Carlos. From there, I’ll fly out to San Francisco to get myself situated for work. The rest of the family will hang out with Christian’s sister in Phoenix and start road tripping around to visit family and friends. 

The plan is for Christian to be back at the boat in early September, to start prepping her for our Southern voyage down Baja and then across to Central America. I’ll finish up work and meet him there with the kids. Hopefully we can start sailing again by October 1st. 

Although we are excited to visit friends and family, we don’t feel ready to leave the boat. We love this life. I do look forward to working as well, but not to being away from the family. I know it’s worth it, to keep us sailing, but after so much time together, it’s hard to imagine time apart.  I’m hoping Christian and the kids can visit San Francisco often enough to get my fix in. 

I’ll be posting more about the last few weeks soon, but wanted to get this out. 

Talk soon.