This article was previously written by Rachel Messerschmidt for and published by Vancouver Family Magazine in September 2021.
After our epic orca encounter, we wrapped up our spring and summer cruising in the San Juan Islands and crossed the Strait of Juan de Fuca south to Port Townsend. There, we celebrated our daughter’s 7th birthday and put the boat into a marina for the weekend so that we could take our kids down to Vancouver for a couple weeks to visit grandparents.
My husband, Brenden, and I returned to the boat for some good old-fashioned physical labor. We both took two weeks of vacation from our jobs so that we could have the boat hauled out of the water to complete some important projects before we leave to sail the open ocean south toward Mexico.
We learned how to lay up fiberglass and repaired a soft spot in the foredeck of the boat. The patch job isn’t pretty, but the underlying structure is stronger than before, which is what counts. We also used our new fiberglass skills to reattach one of the main bulkhead walls inside the boat to the underside of the cabintop. Another structural support repair to help ensure the boat is safe for our journey down the West Coast.
The amazing team at the Port Townsend Shipwright’s Co-Op took on the big repair project to replace the large chunk of our teak toerail which had been ripped out in an anchorage accident last summer. They did a fantastic job. Now I definitely feel the pressure to take the time for the cosmetic work of sanding the rest of the original toerail back to some semblance of its former glory.
We also completed lots of smaller projects on our to-do list such as rigging an attachment point for our removeable staysail stay, replacing our anchor rope rode with new line, and also switching the anchor chain around so that the opposite end will be the new more-commonly used section.
We bought jerry jugs for holding extra diesel for the journey, in case the winds don’t cooperate and we need to motor some of the distance down the coast. We bought lots of new clothes for ourselves and the kiddos since we’ve been neglecting our wardrobes and last year’s outfits are getting threadbare. Oh, and of course, we bought food and provisions for the journey and worked out last minute details with our crew.
Two weeks of hard work in the boat yard flew by and we took a week to again drive south to Vancouver for our own time visiting with family before leaving.
Despite everything we’ve done to prepare, especially lately, it really came as a bit of a shock to me when I realized that our journey, this adventure we’ve planned for literally over half a decade, is upon us. We’re MOVING to Mexico. We’ve never been there. We don’t speak the language (or, at least, certainly not very well). And we’re just up and going? Are we crazy? I hope not.
Rachel Messerschmidt and her family are Clark County natives living and cruising full time aboard their sailboat, Mosaic. Currently traveling from the Pacific Northwest, down the west coast of the US, and onward into Mexico, Rachel blogs about her life and journey at www.mosaicvoyage.com. She shares her family’s adventures in a monthly column in Vancouver Family Magazine.