Gearing up

I want to tell you about the whole process of gearing up for this trip but it's a long story and will take several installments. All I can say is thank god for the internet and UPS. How else would you gear up for an ocean sailing expedition from a landlocked high-altitude desert? We hatched the plan to buy a sailboat and go to Mexico about four months ago, in September. I initially figured we'd go in February. That would leave plenty of time to find a boat, buy it, gear up, pack, and get there. My doctor, however, intimated that I might want to go sooner if not right away. We didn't even have the boat though! I put on my old logistics sergeant hat and went at it like a fiend. Some days I spent 12 hours reading books, ordering more books, making lists, searching for gear, searching for deals on gear, ordering, and dragging stuff out of closets and sheds. It may be a small boat, but the task of outfitting it for a three-month cruise ("a three hour tour") is monumental. First there is the gear that pertains to the boat: sails, oars, motor, lines, anchors, anchor rodes, gas can, ladder, fenders, battery-powered running lights, boat hook, fire extinguisher, fiberglass repair kit, motor repair kit, sail repair kit, spare hardware. Then there is the navigation and safety stuff: charts, parallel rules, dividers, protractor, china markers, compass, GPS and digital charts, cruising guides and weather books specific to the Gulf of California, VHF radio, single sideband shortwave radio, logbook, waterproof binoculars with rangefinder, hand bearing compass, first aid kit, life vests, whistles, strobes in case we fall overboard, red flares and orange smoke flares (night vs day), SPOT GPS tracker, a dinghy (and paddles), a ditch bag with survival gear. And the stuff for camping on the boat and onshore: a tent that fits over the cockpit of the boat, a tent for shore camping, burly stakes that will hold a tent down on a beach in a big wind (for which Baja is famous), sleeping pads, sleeping bags and fuzzy fleece liners, a lantern and headlamps, a loo (of some sort). Lots of thinking went into gear for cooking, eating, and hydrating: a two-burner propane stove, a slick fiberglass propane tank that weighs half what the steel ones weigh (and floats!), an aluminum dry box for all the kitchen gear, a cooler (for the beer!), 7-gallon water jugs, 2.5-gallon collapsible water jugs, 10-liter Dromedary bags for storing in the bilge in case of water shortage, gear for a solar still, dry bags for storing dry food, a kitchen tarp for either the boat or the beach, fishing gear (rod and trolling lines). Then we have our personal gear: foul weather pants and jacket, boat shoes, layers of polypro and fleece ("engineered clothing" as my sister Anne calls it), sunhats, sunglasses, sunscreen, bathing suits, flip flops, snorkeling gear, rashguard shirts and nylon pants, waterproof camera (16 Gb of memory oughta do it). Tim has his art stuff and I have my knitting stuff. I also have a lot of geology stuff; never leave home without it: rock hammer, Brunton compass, sample bags (there's always some rock that wants to come home with me), hand lens, field notebooks, a waterproof box full of Baja geology literature. We also have a waterproof box full of books on marine mammals (whales and dolpins), tide pool critters, Baja plants (they are weird; ever see a Boojum?), Baja fishing guide, birds, marine first aid, and forecasting weather. Don't forget the folding chairs and rolling table! I don't think the table is going to fit. But the chairs are the difference between a good trip and a bad trip. They are going if I have to strap them to the transom.

More thought than you can imagine went into every decision about every thing we are taking along. Confronted with running GPS, VHF, SPOT, strobes, shortwave, flashlights, lantern, computer (oh yeah, don't forget the laptop in a waterproof Pelican case), walkie talkies (so I can go pound on rocks while Tim paints), and camera, we decided we'd rather rig up a solar panel than fill a dump with three months' worth of batteries. That decision meant finding a solar panel suitable for a marine environment and a deep cycle marine battery as well as DC chargers for everything. The solar panel is waterproof (and folds up to the size of a small paperback book) and can be mounted on deck, but the battery isn't and has to live in a dry bag. A side note: the deep cycle battery has a built-in air compressor (for flat tires on the drive to and from) and jumper cables; the engineer that thought this one up gets a gold star. I wasn't even looking for those options. We have a sack full of electronics parts. I finally had to label all the DC chargers with adhesive tape so I could tell which one is which. Of course, no two items use the same charger; I checked. I want to mention here some of the gizmos we AREN'T taking. No sat phone, no satellite modem for the laptop, no EPIRB (another kind of locating beacon), no HAM radio, no chart plotter, no LORAN, no fish finder, no electric razor, no iPhone-iPod or other iGizmo. No margarita maker. And the boat doesn't have a cabin. We're going minimalist.