Since this Q& A is so long, it gets its own post!
Q: What is the exact cost of cruising, and why will no one will tell me?
A: We briefly addressed this in FAQ #26 and on this post, but since the question keeps coming up, we’ll try to be more explicit. When we were trying to budget, we were also frustrated at the lack of hard numbers for costs. But, now we understand why. There are many factors that can affect/change the costs.
First, nothing will dominate more than Continue reading
May 31, 2009 We were up early and ready to pull out of port by 0645. Even though we were going through the usual motions, it felt different. For the first time in over two years, we were going back. We always moved forward. The fact that we were going back hit us hard. It’s over. It is really over.
We were joined by a journalist from Circumnavigator for the trip down. We pulled out as soon as she arrived. We actually had to fight the instinct to go north or west, and instead turned south. We used the never used in 2 years “reverse route” feature of the plotter to set a reciprocal course back to San Diego. Going back on our previous course seems wrong. Our plotter draws a red line where we have been. By definition of our circumnavigation the red line has always been behind us. Now we were following the red line.
Right away, we realized Continue reading
Here are some stats on our trip. If you are you interested in any other numbers, let us know and we’ll try to come up with them for you.
Trip Duration
Overall Time: 2 years, 2 days (733 days, 2008 was leap year).
Days at sea/days on land: 199/534 = 27% time at sea
Boat Numbers
Average speed entire trip: 6 knots
Engine Hours: 4,774
Generator hours: 1,902
Nautical Miles: 28,940 (33,821 statute miles, 53,539 kilometers)
Diesel consumed: ~11,800 US gallons, 44,600 liters
Main engine failures: None
Passages
Number of passages 7 days or longer: 8 (3 alone, 5 with crew)
Guests that did passages with us: 14 (counting the overnight guests on the Panama Canal transit)
Longest non-stop passage just the two of us: Continue reading
We got up at midnight after a two hour nap. Everything was pretty well ready to go before we took our nap, so all we needed to do was warm up the engine before we pulled out. We untied and took off at around 1230.
At first the seas were ugly. Eric was really sick and Christi was green. It is kind of surprising to us how fast we lose our tolerance to the ocean. The longer we sit in port, the more likely we are to be green when we do finally go out again.
The seas slowly but surely calmed down throughout the night, and by dawn it was pretty darn flat outside. It was foggy out. Not so foggy that there was no visibility, but foggy enough that we couldn’t see the mountainous Mexican coastline at all. And we were running pretty close to shore.
We got to the US border at around 0900. We were expecting Continue reading
The last four days we have been eating a lot, exploring the town some more, trying to take care of some preliminary life chores that will make settling in at San Diego easier, and socializing. The weather has gone back to normal, which in the early spring means sunny and clear, but cold and windy. It looks like it should be warm outside, but it isn’t. We are running the heat in the morning and have to wear long pants and jackets when we go out. On one hand, it is a nice change of pace from the perpetual summer, but on the other hand, we are not used to cool weather and are having trouble adjusting to it.
Two things that are significant to Ensenada happened Continue reading