This article was previously written by Rachel Messerschmidt for and published by Vancouver Family Magazine in December 2022.
This was my FINAL monthly column written for Vancouver Family Magazine.
We’ve been back in the Pacific Northwest since mid-August. We’re visiting family, friends, and trying to determine the next steps in our family’s journey.
We’ve managed to pack a lot into our time here: hiking Beacon Rock, visiting Mt. St. Helens, sight-seeing in Bend and Astoria, and even a trip to Medford which included a drive to Crater Lake. We’ve reconnected with friends and been given opportunities to explore new interests. Our daughter even got the chance to ride a friend’s horse on several occasions.
Coming back here has had me thinking a lot about what ‘home’ means to me, to us. Should we keep living aboard? We want to buy land for a small homestead at some point. But what about traveling? We’re not really ready to settle down long-term just yet.
Our sailboat, Mosaic, has been our home for the past six years. She’s part of who we are now, but boats take a lot of effort, time, and money to maintain to safety standards. And after a hard year of cruising in Mexico, Mosaic needs some well-deserved TLC before we can put her back in the water and get back out cruising.
The thing is, though, that we’re not sure just how much attention she needs, or how costly the updates and repairs will be. We need to spend some time investigating and poking into things before we’ll know if getting back in the water this year is even feasible.
So, our current plan is to spend the month of December in Puerto Penasco where the boat is being stored. We’ll rent a small apartment and tear into boat projects to determine if we can get it ready to go back into the water. We need to either accomplish that by January or change gears for the time-being.
If we can’t get back out cruising for this upcoming season, we’ll likely shift our plans and turn instead to traveling via pet-sitting.
To that eventuality, we purchased a membership with Trusted Housesitters. This is a service that connects house- and/or pet-owners with families, couples, or individuals who are willing to care for a home and pets in exchange for a place to stay while the owners travel.
There are house-sits available around the world and we think it could be a fun, and financially feasible, way to travel whenever we’re not on the boat. At the time of this writing, we’ve completed five sits from Portland to Seattle and east to Bend. We have sits arranged for Sacramento and Phoenix as we head back south toward Mosaic.
In the future, we’re considering Europe and even Australia, hopefully for several months at a time when traveling further afield. But, just as our first season cruising Mexico has come to an end, so too does this monthly column. We live a life that keeps us on the move and somewhat difficult to pin down, and we like it that way, at least for now. For the future? Only time will tell. Thanks for coming along as I’ve shared our journey for the past couple of years. I hope you’ve enjoyed the stories.
Rachel Messerschmidt and her family are Clark County natives living and cruising full time aboard their 40-foot sailboat, Mosaic. They traveled down the US West Coast and have been cruising in Mexico since November of 2021. Rachel shares her family’s adventures on her blog at www.mosaicvoyage.com and on Facebook and Instagram (at)mosaicvoyage. She writes a monthly column for Vancouver Family Magazine.
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