CHANGES

Baja, mainland Mexico, Honduras, and Costa Rica. After transiting the Canal, we spent hurricane season volunteering and expanding our maintenance skills at an off-grid eco-retreat called CocoVivo. This pause allowed us to take in the incredible jungle surroundings, practice Spanish, and exhale a bit after crushing some serious miles the previous season. The bioluminessence, poison dart frogs, howler monkeys, and tropical fruits were all rewards for taking the leap on a big trip like this.

Today, Portobelo is a small town with restaurants, a neat cafe, and immigration offices. Our guidebook said there is never a westerly wind, but we experienced some pretty choppy conditions from that only unprotected direction. The book also said this is one of the rainiest ports in the world and that many cruisers sail here intentionally to fill their water tanks. We had pickled our watermaker months back because the 140+ inches of annual rainfall was more than enough. Of course, while we were there, it never rained. I had to paddle to shore for a few bottles to top us up.

History has loomed large for much of our travels, and was getting larger as we got into the more well-documented waters of the Caribbean.

From Bocas, we sailed to the notorious Portobelo anchorage, just outside Colon and the Caribbean approach to the Canal. Christopher Columbus anchored there in 1502, and the majority of the gold taken from the Americas passed through this port. Sir Francis Drake met his end there (from dysentery) and has long been rumored to be buried at sea somewhere in the nearby waters.

Yes, there are still uncrowded anchorages out there. That little white dot is 'Azimuth' in a hurricane hole in Bocas del Toro, Panama.

Then we headed to the most char ming marina on our route, Turtle Cay. We docked for $10/day for several weeks to catch up on deferred maintenance and freelance work, while charting our next course. We had planned to cross the Caribbean in November, but started to second-guess getting to the US during northerly winds and colder temperatures. After more time with guidebooks and talking with seasoned cruisers at Turtle Cay, we decided to delay our crossing until the next switch in seasons. This would give us time to enjoy the San Blas Islands and add some easting to the schedule by sailing to Cartagena, Colombia.

One of the remarkable things about ocean voyaging is how some plans just drop into place. As soon as the idea surfaced, it felt like a weight off our shoulders. We invited a few friends to join us in exploring the San Blas and spent two months island-hopping. The waters are as beautiful as everyone says, and there's much to be learned from the way the Guna Yala Indigenous people have maintained their environment and sovereignty over the ages. When the Christmas trade winds started to threaten, we got in touch with famed weather router Chris Parker and his team. We had less-than-optimal windows to choose from and finally took the lesser of the evils to bash to Cartagena. The waves were steep and short, very different from the slow roll of the Pacific. We tend to have strong stomachs, but both were feeling mareado (dizzy), as they say in Spanish.

I woke up tired for the changing of the watch, but was jarred to instant attention when I saw what every sailor fears: water over the floorboards! Our bilge float switch had broken, and there was a large volume of seawater entering the boat. We took turns holding the bilge pump switch, looking for the leak, and tossing our crackers over the rail until one of us grabbed the duct tape to hold the switch. We were relieved to see the pump overtaking the leak.

It took a while, but we finally found the source. Like a number of other boats, our deck drains run through the hull — via a short length of hose — before exiting at the waterline. Our starboard side thru-hull is located behind cabinetry and under the pilot berth, which made it the most difficult to install during our DIY haulout at Spaulding Marine in 2021. Of course, that's the one that was leaking. One of the double-clamped hose ends had jiggled off after 7,000 miles of ocean sailing and was adding water whenever it dipped below the waterline. We hove to 40 miles offshore, and after much fussing with the hose, pounded two teak bungs in place. I had to get my torso into the cabinet and used a conveniently located rolling pin to assist in setting the bungs. With that behind us, the rest of the 300-mile crossing was an endurance event. We were relieved to see the city skyline after a day of rest at a nearby island.

Our time in Cartagena, a city of 1.2 million people, has been good practice for living back in civilization after eight months of remote jungles and islands.

I dare to share our next moves, even if they are written in sand. We cast off to the Yucatan in mid-March and aim to arrive in the Chesapeake well before the next hurricanes begin rolling in.

— Ashley 3/1/23 cloudsformoverland.substack.com

Readers — Ashley and Scott's final destination is Chesapeake Bay, which will become Azimuth's new homeport. The couple will settle on land in Richmond, Virginia. "We've loved living aboard for nearly seven years, but look forward to spreading out a bit and living closer to many loved ones," says Ashley.

OutRun — Ericson 36C

Shane Engelman and Karina Durand Working Remotely

Berkeley

Not so long ago, most cruisers didn't have to work to enjoy the lifestyle. Many were retirees who had saved or invested enough to get along just fine on yearslong cruises. Others were lucky or savvy enough that they could afford to take long sabbaticals away from their respective careers.

The world has changed quickly since then. Thanks in part to the COVID-19 pandemic, working remotely has gone from a niche idea to the forefront of how business gets done these days. The trend has extended to cruising. It's now easier than ever for younger cruisers to earn a living away from land. Like me, most are happy to trade some time to live the cruising lifestyle.

Here's a look at how I did it. Maybe you can take something from my experience and apply it to your situation. I should point out right off the bat that I do have college degrees, but none of them have anything to do with software, and neither do my past lives. (Among other career moves, I used to be a cop.) I firmly believe almost anyone can make the transition with the right motivation and catalyst.

While going to school in Florida, I found a "hackerspace" — a place where people in the tech industry meet to work and share information — where they were willing to teach people various coding languages, with the only "payment" being that I would teach others once I had the skills. All I had to do was ask, and mentors relentlessly helped me meet my goals, which involved learning code.

After spending only three months absorbing all of the information these "hackers" (in this sense, good guys who taught others how to do stuff on the computer) had to share, I had learned enough of the Python programming language to almost know what I was doing. Two days after I graduated with a master's degree in game design in 2015, I flew west and moved onto my friend's air mattress in an old building in the Tenderloin. With my limited experience and completely irrelevant resume, at 27, I landed a six-figure job after only a few days of looking.

I bought OutRun after working in San Francisco for about a year, with the dream of eventually taking my skills out to sea. It wouldn't be until 2019 that I was able to transition from my office job to fully remote on the boat.

Once you find that level of independence from the office, the next step is networking — getting more or less regular access to the internet wherever you are in the world.

At the moment, Starlink is by far the best way to stay connected when you're anywhere "near" land. Even with the degraded performance in busy places like California or Florida, it just works, with a price that's comparable to any standard home network plan.

The 'C' in Ericson 36C stands for "cruising." Though sometimes confused with a "regular" ricson , the clipper bows, semi ush deck and stern-hung rudders of the 36Cs resulted in a unique look that can't be confused with any other boat. Ericson built 66 of them in the mid-'70s, and they still make great cruising boats.

Cellular plans are also good, but have their limits. They often have data caps and intermittent performance, so should only be considered a backup method for conducting work.

If you're starting from the US and plan to be there for a majority of your time, Google Fi can be an excellent option. The rates are extremely favorable, there are no contracts, and it can connect to more than just one provider's cell towers. However, after about five months of continuous time out of the country, they will cut off your data (but your phone calls and SMS will still work just fine).

Sometimes, the main challenge is just finding a place with reliable Wi-Fi. Then, when you finally find the only coffee shop that has it, while you're sipping your latte (assuming you drink coffee; I don't), trying to communicate with your team over a video call — prepare to be interrupted by roosters, dogs, goats, motorcycles, people "singing" in the streets, and other unspeakable sounds that you'll only discover whenever it's time for you to hit "unmute" during your keynote presentation.

Maybe it's not just you gallivanting about the globe. If you have a travel partner of any sort and you've both got work schedules, that's when some of the real complication sets in. Unless you have a large yacht (I don't), options are limited if you have calls at the same time. OutRun has two cabins, a main salon, and a cockpit, and so far, that's worked out OK for me and my partner, Karina, who also works remotely. Thankfully, technology has advanced to the point you can diffuse background noise at the click of a button.

Once you have the skills and that sweet, sweet inter net connection, the main key to making remote work work is time management. Back in my old nine-to-five life, I had to show up at the office and stay until my conscience was overwritten by my desire to escape. Thankfully, in the tech sector, you're often not measured strictly by hours spent in a chair. But on a boat, this also means compromises must be made. Maybe you're not going to be able to see that cool island as you hoped, because there's a workshop at headquarters and you must "be" there. You might have to let a favorable weather window close because you have to stay where you are until business is done. Or, you might have to take a crummy weather window to get to the next safe harbor in time to make sure the boss stays happy.

It's all about whether you can deliver. On the other side of the coin, if you can get your expected workload completed earlier than it's due, don't feel bad — take advantage!

And of course, writing code is not the only path to working remotely. Creative occupations like writing, graphic design, and even customer support are all fair game. (YouTube channels count, too.)

The good news — the best news — of all this is that you can head out and enjoy the many benefits of cruising well before "retirement age." And if you're already retired, there are plenty of ways for you to earn a few extra bucks, too.

So, those are the basics. There's a lot I haven't touched on, such as power requirements, transport to land, and precise costs of services used. For anyone interested, I have more on those details at my blog, blog.runninginthenight.com.

Join us on the water! You can do it, I promise!

— Shane 3/1/23

Magnum — Peterson 44

Anne Crowley and Uwe Dobers

There and Back Again

Emeryville previous year, we opted to drop anchor in Coches Prietos at Santa Cruz Island in calm conditions.

After all these years, we still have Magnum and are still having adventures. This time last year, I singlehanded Magnum back home to San Francisco from the Pacific Northwest, having spent summer 2021 cruising the San Juan Islands and a bit of Canada.

The plan was to sail south to Mexico and possibly west and beyond, in a pattern much the same as we did in our original circumnavigation in 2006 with our then 4-year-old daughter, Kara. (Kara is now 20 and in college and Anne is still working, albeit in a job that offers her some flexibility to commute back and forth.) But since it was already too late in the year to sail south, we decided to remain in the Bay Area.

As spring 2022 approached, I sailed solo under the Gate but didn't get very far, as I noticed brown liquid in the bilge and a very hot propeller shaft — a re-entry to the woes of the cruising life. I was towed back against the current. The leak turned out to be a leaking reserve tank, not engine oil as I had thought, since there was no diesel smell. The shaft issue was the wrong size gland packing.

The next weather window was short, with a destination of Monterey. After that, a break in Anne's work schedule allowed her to jump on and sail with me to Santa Barbara. Her addition brought better luck, as the conditions were smooth as far as Point Conception, but after rounding we had 30 knots, eventually arriving in darkness in Santa Barbara.

We always enjoy spending time in this environment, especially with our brandnew fold-up bikes on board — thanks to more storage, since Kara is no longer on board fulltime. We then continued on to Oxnard, where we watched a sailboat limp in after shredding the mainsail the night before in the Channel Islands. Anne hopped off at Marina del Rey and I continued to San Diego; the weather by now was the typical June gloom that hovers over Southern California in the spring.

San Diego has some public slips, which means it's open to all members of the public. This situation attracts the homeless, with the result that showers were closed due to continued destruction and abuse. There was even a shootout in front of the marina that closed the road for a while. By this time, I encountered boats that had bashed up from Baja, and again it seemed too late to continue farther south. When you are retired, time takes on a whole different meaning.

Anne flew out again from Marina del Rey and I dropped Magnum at Long Beach and returned for Thanksgiving.

In mid-December, I attempted to solo-sail the boat down to Mazatlán before Christmas, but the weather didn't cooperate and I made it only to Ensenada and flew back for Christmas. One storm after another closed weather windows to sail farther south until, finally, in late January,

I tur ned north and had the pleasure of both Anne and Kara (in between a priority visit to her boyfriend) joining me for a few days. These days were nice, easy sails, back to days of old when it was just the three of us, relaxing with good food and cold beer.

From Santa Barbara, it was mostly motoring until Half Moon Bay and finally back to our homeport of Emeryville to our old slip. The rest of the summer was filled with a European visit by plane. September and October consisted of boat repairs and improvements.

In early November, during Anne's next chunk of free time, we set off south again nonstop to Santa Barbara. In the clear water of the marina, the prop was plainly visible — as was the fact that the zinc that had been replaced only five days before was now completely gone, though the bolt remained, in perfect condition. Oddly enough, another boat in the marina reported the same strangeness.

After missing the Channel Islands the

Anne and I took off from Ensenada and sailed nonstop to Bahia Asuncion, then to Mag Bay, and on to Mazatlán. We hung out there for 10 days, took a plane trip to Mexico City, and then continued south. We took our time, spending some nice days at anchor in Chacala, finally arriving in La Cruz Marina, where we are now.

Things are quite different from 11 years ago. One of the good changes is that we now have the Iridium phone with PredictWind weather program. (We couldn't help noting that so many boats now have Starlink.) We ended up hiring someone to deal with our expired TIP that we never canceled when we left Mexico back in 2007 — $1,000 later, we were good to go!

Anne has now returned to work, and I'm getting prepared to cross the Pacific, solo, in April. But first I must replace the failing transmission. It's unavailable here at La Cruz, so next on the list is a quick flight back home to buy a new one and bring it back.

— Uwe 11/30/22