Then and now: sailing Baja nine years later
What’s your favorite place? We’ve heard this question a lot lately. Jamie’s current answer to the “best place” question is that he has 100 top ten favorites. His point (aside from the impossibility of picking just one) is that there’s context needed. Some places are favorites for the delicious food. Others are unforgettable for their underwater […]
Turning sailing dreams into reality
Welcome, newcomers to Sailing Totem! For our family’s backstory to a decade of sailing around the world, see Who and Why. For hopeful cruisers, articles addressing the most common questions found in Start Here. Can we help you? Learn about our lifestyle coaching or get in touch. This week our family has the incredible opportunity […]
Summer in Seattle, after detour to NY for the TODAY show!
Fireworks flashed in the distance last night as the Bainbridge Island ferry pushed through Puget Sound’s dark water. This was supposed to be our last leg for summer travel back to the Seattle area, the culmination of a plan crafted in minutes while in Grenada last fall after learning Totem’s hull needed drying out. Instead, […]
Optimizing Iridium GO use on board
Desert and sea are the incongruous pairing when sailing along Baja, where cactus-studded mountain ranges plummet to a Gulf full of marine life. Miles of isolated coastline make for stunning cruising grounds. We love the remote, wild-west feel of the Sea of Cortez… but we need to stay connected. There are approximately 2,534,934 more cardón […]
Sailing mavericks, unapologetically motoring
Sailors, like fisherman, can be a little boastful. Fishermen are better at it – complete with battle reenactment, culminating in outstretched arms indicating size. Sailors’ stories aren’t much different – a battle against the elements and with photographs! Of course, photographed waves appear small, so you have to double or triple the size to be […]
Guests on a boat: how our friends nailed it
“Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.” When Benjamin Franklin said this, he wasn’t thinking about fitting two families – a total of nine adult-sized humans – into a 47’ boat that technically sleeps six, for ten days. So why did things go so well when our friends visited Totem in Panama a […]
Wet bottom: a haulout story
Totem cruises the Sea of Cortez; in about three weeks, we haul at the Cabrales shipyard in Puerto Peñasco, a small harbor surrounded by the Sonora desert. Typically, boats can go a few years between haulouts. So why now – didn’t we just do this in Grenada, six or seven months ago? Yes, we did, […]
Circumnavigation, check! What’s next?
Motoring north from La Paz, parched mountains reach up on Totem’s starboard side along a gently winding channel. On the far side of a wide blue bay bask the low desert hills of southern Baja. Tonight we’ll anchor in a quiet bay where the water turns to clear turquoise near shore, and we scan the […]
Rags From Riches: common pitfalls with cruising sails
Jamie periodically shares his expertise in a technical article: here he reviews typical problems cruisers experience with their sails, and how to address them. For more from the wells of this cruising sailmaker, see tagged posts on the topic. Way, way back when I was designing sails for crazy people that sailed around the world in […]
Guna Yala (San Blas) practicalities for cruisers
Guna Yala, Kuna Yala, San Blas: an evolution of names for the archipelago that stretches from Panama’s border at Colombia very nearly to the canal zone. Officially “Guna” (the better linguistic match than Kuna) since 2011, the region’s active effort to preserve indigenous culture and traditions creates a draw for many visitors. Here’s what I […]
