JC McDowell and the Family Unit

A short update…

This is our second stay in San Carlos, Sonora on the boat.  With the two kids it seems like we can’t pack less than a full truck load each trip but we’re trying to get everything situated on the boat to make it easier to get down here at the spur of the moment.

I’ve been working in the mornings at the local cafe, which has WIFI, to book some shows stateside this summer.  The connection is great and I can even use SKYPE with no troubles.  Mail is more expensive and SLOW.  I’m not really sure how to overcome that issue right now.

Purified water has to purchased for consumption and we use 2.5 gallon jugs on the boat (it’s easier to haul and store) but most folks buy a 5 gallon and use a little pump that fits into the opening to dispense the water.  Even restaurants use the 5 gallons for drinking water.  We haven’t had any problems with the ice or vegetables at the restaurants we’ve visited.

There are laundry facilities here at the marina and there is also a full service laundry that will wash and fold your laundry for about the same price.

Traveling here is pretty simple- no different than in the states.  Shopping can be exciting if you don’t speak the language but with a sense of humor and a dictionary you can mangle your way through most situations.  A fair percentage of the locals speak some english (often better than my spanish).

Good deals can be found.  We enjoy the Club de Capitanes across from the Marina with 15 peso draft beers and 17 peso fish tacos.  A meal for Hil, Emma, and I costs about $10 US (12-13 pesos per $1 dollar) compared to a family meal at McDonald’s in Tucson which runs dangerously close to $20.  I rather have the three beers, a lemonade for Emma, chips and salsa, and the 5 fresh fish tacos than the cardboard meals from McDonald’s any day.

Everyone is very friendly, locals and expats alike.  We enjoy having the kids as icebreakers.  The Mexican women love children, especially infants, and have no problems walking right up and taking your baby right out of your arms.

We’re adapting to life on the boat.  We’ve had harsh Northerly winds the last few days which makes a wet boat ride to shore and a disconcerting night on the boat.  The winds are supposed to die down tomorrow.

We need a different dinghy.  Our hard sailing dinghy is just too tender for 2 adults and 2 infants- not to mention the car load of junk I have to haul back and forth.  A hard bottom inflatable or a port-a-bote would be a good solution down here.  The shores are often rocky and a soft bottom dinghy would get ruined before you can collect your first sand dollar.

I haven’t even looked at the rigging or sail suite.  There’s too much to handle wrangling the kids and dealing with the necessities of living on the boat right now.  We’re not going anywhere anyways.  My great hope is to pull the sails before the end of May and get a bottom job by next year.  Next season we hope to start sailing if we can get the boat in order.

All is right in the world here.  I do have the nagging- “Go make money” voice in the back of my head, which is justified as our finances dwindle down to nothing.  We’ll be working full steam soon enough.  Finding the balance to enjoy your time NOW and worry about the future in the FUTURE is the hard part.

Speaking of which, we were just invited to the Soggy Peso beach bar- that’s the kind of future I’d like to worry about!

We’re looking at the calendar trying to figure out where in the world are we going to be for the next 6 months.  In the delicate balance of maximizing our time on the boat and keeping enough cash in the bank we have come to a few conclusions:

We can’t let our cash reserves get TOO [read more...]

A comment from a reader made me think back to a little over a year ago when we first cast off the bowline from a more traditional lifestyle to start living on a boat with a simpler philosophy towards family, money, consumerism, and wealth.

At the end of 2008, we just moved on our CSY [read more...]

We made it- finally!

Despite the endlees list of things to do and other mindless paperwork that is getting backed up, we headed south to San Carlos with an overstuffed Suburban not knowing quite what to expect.  We bought the boat in late June and to that point had not even spent one night aboard!

In [read more...]

The one eyed man is King.

(This post was a draft from before we left Georgia in December 2009)

I’ve been sick with the cold for about a week. It’s been raining here and alternates between cold fronts to downright balmy. While simultaneously running a low grade fever, I have to turn off the heat [read more...]

Recently life has been a lot of hard work, but productive and fruitful work.  We have spent long hours and countless days working but not without reward and indicators along the way the we are indeed moving forward.

It’s summertime and the living is easy
Fish are jumping and the cotton is high
Your daddy’s rich and your [read more...]

I wrapped up the Tucson Gem show yesterday and I am ready for a break after a long month of 12 hour days working the Quartzsite RV show and then straight into the Gem show.

Both were great shows for us and have provided us a great start for this year.

Great News!  We now have a [read more...]

Well, we just had the BEST day ever in donut land at the Tucson Gem Show.  Even more striking, we sold more donuts in 4 hours than I’ve ever sold in an entire day!  We sold unknown hundreds of dozens of donuts, 52 hand pressed frozen lemonades, a dozen frosted cinnamon nuts, and several cases [read more...]

Today is day five of the Tucson Gem Show at our location.  There are about 20 different location throughout the city, each with it’s own unique twist and offering.  The location I’m at is wholesale only full of professional buyers intermingled with business owner’s wives looking for good deals.

This show opens daily at 10am and [read more...]

Yesterday we returned from Quarzsite, Arizona after finishing working the ‘Big Tent’ RV Show for 9 days straight selling mainly coffee and donuts.  Quartzsite, Arizona is really just a blip in the road 8 months out of the year with a population of roughly 3,000 people.  But come November the population starts to swell from [read more...]