"Vagabundos del Terra y Mar" mexicruiser's Profile

Welcome to my pages, and thanks for taking the time to stop by...

I am originally from Cape Town, South Africa, and left there in June of 1982 to travel overseas with my sister. I had a one-year roundtrip ticket, but when that year was up, I realised that I wasn't yet ready to go home, there was still so much to see and do, and so many places to visit...

My sister went home after the first year, but I ended up travelling and working my way around Europe for a total of two and a half years! During that time I visited many different countries such as England, Scotland, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy, France and Austria.

After Europe I spent 6 months travelling in Canada and the US, where I met my husband-to-be, Jeff, in Death Valley, California, of all places! I returned home to South Africa, we stayed in contact for 10 months, and finally he sent me a plane-ticket back to the US, and I've been here ever since! We recently celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary!

Men of the sea

Due to recent changes in the workplace, we have quit our jobs and will be heading south to Mexico on our boat. We will be leaving next week sometime, and are really looking forward to getting out there and having some fun times again....

Update...gone cruising...

On Saturday, November 17, we left Ventura with a wonderful send-off by many of our friends who dropped by to bid us 'bon voyage'! On board were El Capitan, Jeff, First-mate, Anne and crew and deck swabbie, Tom, plus Ship's cat, Perkins of course!

We left with some sunshine and flat, calm seas, as we motored to our first stopover, Paradise cove near Malibu. The following day we motored to Newport Beach where we spent 2 nights tucked away on a mooring ball in one of the side estuaries...what a great deal Newport is, $5 a night on the ball, including showers near the Coast Guard station.

We had fun running around Newport harbor in the dinghy, checking out the happy hour hang-outs, eateries, etc. Provisioning was a cinch as Vons, or Pavilions as it is called down there, was a short walk from the harbor...Tom played sherpa that day, and lugged about 70lbs of beer, wine and groceries, including a 12lb turkey, back to the boat...he definitely earned his keep that day!!!

Upon departing Newport, we noticed that Otto the autopilot was refusing to cooperate, so we all had to take turns hand-steering on the next leg to Dana Point...boy, we sure have become spoiled by the autopilot, and hand-steering was definitely not something we were looking forward to having to do all the way down to Mexico!!

We spent the night in the free anchorage in Dana Point, and were entertained by the instructors at the museum near the Pilgrim, where they were giving some schoolkids a taste of the good old days aboard the tallships!

The next morning we departed for Mission Bay where we spent 2 nights in the free anchorage, and had a wonderful Thanksgiving Dinner, thanks to the 12 pounder that Tom carted to the boat!!

Next stop, San Diego, and this is where we have been since last Friday, awaiting our new computer for the autopilot...I guess the old one had had enough, and decided to call it a day! At least it happened while we are still in the US, where it is easier to replace such things.

We ended up spending a total of 9 days in San Diego, waiting for the computer...it arrived, but unfortunately was the wrong size, so we had to re-order the correct one , thus delaying us further. We then had to await a decent weather window as California was being hit by a series of storms!

We finally got our weather window (or so we thought!) and left San Diego on Sunday, December 2. We had a nice run south using the main and the engine since the wind was fairly light. Around sunset that evening we started our watch routine, 3 hours on and 6 hours off! We were expecting the wind to either stay around 15 kts or to die altogether as it usually does around the Ventura area most evenings...this was not to be, however, as the wind kept building fairly steadily and since we still had a full main up, things soon got a little out of hand and we were losing our steerage ability. Finally around midnight Tom awoke the captain, and the order to reef the main was given...this in total darkness, on a pitching deck, with huge breaking seas all around...very exciting, to say the least, the sort of excitement I can usually do without, though!

The good news is that we made it through the night with no injuries, no gear failures and no further issues, and conditions continued to improve as morning made its appearance. Life was good once again!

I'm going to take this opportunity to continue with our adventure on our Mexico pages...please follow along if you are interested...

Just another day in paradise....

Enjoying a beautiful Ventura sunset

On our way back from a one week vacation at Catalina island, we anchored in a lovely cove called Paradise on the mainland near Santa Monica...as one can see from the photo, it was a gorgeous evening, very mellow with a lovely full moon!

Camping among the boojums in Baja...

When we're not hanging out aboard "Outrider" or travelling abroad, we can usually be found in our home away from home, a camper of some kind, on a remote beach somewhere, relaxing, enjoying life, taking it easy...

We both love travelling, and have done a fair amount of travelling since we got together, including a trip or two back to South Africa, visits to England, Turkey, Greece, France and Mexico, as well as many camping trips around the US.

We live on our sailboat in Ventura, California, along with our ship's cat , Perkins, who keeps the mice at bay - he has to earn his keep somehow - just kidding!

More on life on the boat in a later chapter...

This sure beats Denver....

This is what goes on in Cayucos on Christmas Day!! Only in California....

More about the funky little beach town in my Cayucos page!