So there we were…..Thanksgiving 2020 and we’ve got two daughters who really wanted a taste of home for Thanksgiving but Mexico often doesn’t quite have what you might want for a Thanksgiving spread or we’re just too remote to be able to find those things. Costco’s are only in certain cities in Mexico. So there we were….and we just knew we had brought tastes of home with us when we returned from our summer road trip home….but we just could not find that stuff no matter how hard we looked.
Tulum-5 is a veteran sailboat built in the late 70’s and designed to be a performance cruiser doing long bluewater passages. As such, she’s got a fair amount of tankage for water and diesel but she’s just–on–another–level when it comes to dry storage. Not considering the huge sail/anchor locker forward or the massive lazarettes in the stern, Tulum probably has more dry storage than any equivalent sailboat around today.
When Covid struck we didn’t know how bad the pandemic would get or to what degree Mexico or the world might shut down, so we deep provisioned in Mazatlán, La Paz and then again in Loreto in the Sea of Cortez. Then in June of 2020 while we were on the docks in Escondido we started canning…adding cases of canned meat to our overall provisioning scheme. Tulum’s waterline didn’t budge, she took it in stride and was unfazed by the provisioning weight that was added. With all the dry foods and canned goods we took on, we started getting creative in our storage and moving things into more and more of the nooks and crannies that are around the boat and can be easily filled….but we’re not patient or crafty enough to make lists of where we put things…..so it’s like Christmas sometimes when we open the deep recesses to find we’ve put various foods, sauces and soups in hard to reach places. Or we open the deep recesses to find toilet paper….ALOT of toilet paper.
For Thanksgiving 2020 we could not find those basic tastes of home the girls wanted….like the pumpkin pie mix (in a can), cranberry sauce or the salty crispy onion strings you normally put on a green bean casserole. We knew this was our fault but made the best of it, substituting with other things and laughing it off. Till yesterday! Yesterday the HelmsMistress was driven to do a little cleaning of the girl’s lair that we call a V-berth. Lots and lots of cleaning and organizing was done….pictures of the mess shall not be forthcoming. But the room looks so different with the “V” removed.
But as part of the cleaning process, we cleaned the lockers under their bed since we had taken out the huge V in the berth. Yup, you probably guessed it but up there in the front locker that was nearly impossible to access with the V in place, we found all those Thanksgiving tastes of home.
I usually try to get my blog posts out as early in the morning as possible so I can get as many views as possible for the day, but today was just a hot, long and dirty day of crawling around engine spaces again. This time I helped trace and open nearly all of Tulum’s exhaust system, checking the quality of the hoses and checking for carbon or other badness. We didn’t find much but we found plenty of hose clamps that apparently were not stainless steel or high quality so they’re all getting replaced with stainless steel hose clamps. Luckily for me, this story sort of wrote itself. And….the HelmsMistress is awesome and had put a can of my favorite Revel Berry Yerba Mate in the fridge so I had a coldy to write with. If only I had been able to get cold water for my shower….
The author and his family live on their cruising sailboat full time along with their Great Dane where they work on their engine in hot places. Their boat, Tulum-5 is for sale and has a crapload of awesome cruising gear.
