Who, What, Where, When, Why, How

What: A year-long sailing sabbatical in the Western Caribbean.

Who: The Guajardo family: Paul & Lora, along with William 14, Henry 12, Warren 9, Paul 8, and Parker 3.

Where: Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and Costa Rica.

Why: A decade-long dream; a unique educational experience; family fun; life-time memories; write a book; escape the city, and get closer to nature.

How: On less than $1000 a month (after fixed expenses). Aboard a 41’ Cheoy Lee ketch called Boisterous.


BACKGROUND
Lora and I met and fell in love at the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1989 and were married in 1991. Via the Washington Yacht Club, we sailed around the Puget Sound and the Gulf Islands of Canada,

Prior to setting off on our current trip we crossed the Gulf of Mexico six times with children. We cruised to Mexico’s Isla Mujeres on two occasions. We coastal cruised the Louisiana and Texas Coasts and the Florida Keys. We also sailed the British and U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Turks & Caicos, and the Bahamas.

Our boat is a 41’ Cheoy Lee ketch, built in Hong Kong in 1977 and launched in 1981. We’re told that the boat once belonged to the New York Knickerbockers. We bought it from Nick, a friend from the marina whom we’d known for about 10 years. One of the things that we liked about the boat is the circular settee and all the bunks--four singles and two doubles, so technically it sleeps eight.

We’ve had a number of sailboats before this one: 21’ Sea-Pearl cat-ketch, Blackwatch 24 cutter, Balboa 26, Southern Cross 28 cutter, Freedom 33 cat-ketch, Columbia 36, Morgan Out-Island 37, and a Formosa 51 ketch. In addition we’d had a fleet of small boats, Sunfish, Laser, Force 5, Widgeon, Puffer, Dolphin Senior, Omega, Capri 14, Daysailer, Pirateer, McDinghy, Snark, Walker Bay, and a number of other small sailing boats.

Lora and I have been thinking about this trip for more than a decade. As an English professor, after getting tenure a few years ago, I became eligible for a sabbatical. My options were: one semester off at full pay, or two semesters off at half pay. We chose the latter, and with a summer at either end, we have a little over a year. Of course the purpose of the sabbatical is to write a book, but with a laptop and the web, that can be done anywhere these days.

My job is rewarding. I get to teach minority literature, Mexican-American literature, British literature (the Romantics, Victorians, and Moderns), the British novel, poetry, autobiography/memoir, and literature of the sea. Right now I’m working on a book about the art and artifice of autobiography.

PRELIMINARIES
When I meet sailors who have circumnavigated, or crossed an ocean, or taken an extended cruise what impresses me most, is not so much their sailing prowess--though certainly admirable--it is merely the fact that they were able to leave. In my opinion, leaving is the hardest part. Getting the money for the boat and buying all of the necessary equipment, getting it installed, figuring out what do about your job or business, deciding whether to sell or lease the house (and finding a buyer or tenant), for us these were the most difficult aspects of taking off for a year.

In preparing to leave, we rented a mini-storage unit, so that we could start clearing out our house. William, Henry, and I built huge shelves in our unit so that we could stack boxes up to the ceiling. We built three big shelves 4’x 8’ and four tiers high. The boys got a lot of experience cutting wood, drilling holes, and driving screws. These shelves allowed us to use practically every square foot of space in our 11’x 25’ unit.

We sold most of our furniture on craigslist, but we traded a few pieces to my brother Daniel for a laptop computer and a digital video camera. He also stored some of our nearly 20 bikes (William and Henry each have four bikes: road, mountain, track, and folding). Right before we left we sold our cars, so that at the end we rented one and also relied on friends.

Since hurricane season runs from June first until November, we were eager to leave as soon as I could turn in grades after the semester ended at the beginning of May. September is the worst month for hurricanes, and June is the most benign, so I wasn’t super worried—Lora doesn’t always share my optimism about the weather. At home, Lora dealt with the younger boys, packed up the stuff that we had decided to keep, shopped for food and supplies, and painted most of the house. Wills, Henry and I worked on the boat, often until midnight.

Wills, for example, installed mast steps up to the spreaders so that we can watch for reefs in the tropics. This entailed drilling four holes per step, tapping threads into the mast, and then putting loc-tite on the bolts. Once a step was installed, he would stand on it, and install another.

We called Henry “the screw guru” because he kept our hundreds of screws, nuts, bolts, and washers carefully organized. He was also good at drilling holes and mounting hardware. Because he is smaller, I sometimes had him crawl inside a lazarette to hold the nut while I turned the bolt. The boys helped install the solar panels, windlass, the self-steering windvane. William helped run wires for our single side band radio which required going up the mizzen mast a few times. They fetched tools and extension cords and countless cups of water.

We are greatly indebted to several friends especially Bill Boyher who worked on our electronics, radio, and software. He made us a box for our propane bottle. He loaned us his drill press, compressor, pressure washer. With his truck we ferried diesel fuel aboard. He ran to the chandler, hardware, and electronics stores numerous times. He downloaded manuals from the web and made us CDs. We can never repay his generosity and kindness. Enoch Sears and Merrill Ballantyne stopped by regularly and were always willing to lend a hand though they had boat projects of their own. Heather Griffin and Auntie Beth made dozens of DVDs to keep the boys amused. Nan Rasor loaned us her car for a few days, and on a number of occasions she baby-sat the younger boys. David Haskett loaned us a portable generator which ended up being very useful. George Calderon is a mechanical genius—the kind of guy who can make or fix anything—and he was always a wealth of advice and help. Other friends brought food or encouragement, and we’re grateful to them all.

Our to-do list was several pages long, and each day a friend or slip neighbor would stop by the boat to ask when we were going to leave. At first we felt that we needed to give a date, so we picked May 15. Later that changed to June first, and then June 15th. Later yet we would say, “next Monday,” or “in a few days.” Eventually, that question got very tiresome. Obviously we couldn’t leave until the boat was semi-ready, and in truth we had no idea when that would be. Sometimes seemingly simple job turned into long tedious project because of difficult access, a broken bolt, the wrong part, incompetence, or bad advice.

Meanwhile our house was up for sale. The Cash family put a contract on it, and we had a closing date. We worked hard to move out and clean, and then the day before we were to close, the bank called and said that the Cash family did not have enough cash (their credit was iffy ), so the sale was off. We were supposed to sail off in a couple of weeks, and now we had no buyer. So we went with plan B—leasing our house. We posted an ad on craigslist.org and soon heard from some new college graduates who were going to do Teach for America in Houston. They signed a year-long lease, and we crossed our fingers. We had a plumber replace toilets and washers, and we also had an air-conditioning guy check our system so that we would have no worries while gone. We also hired a fabulous property manager, Dina Salazar, with Platinum One Properties.

The night before we left there was a huge display of fireworks on Clear Lake bidding us farewell. I guess word had gotten out that we were finally leaving. We sailed out of there on the morning of July 5th.