Our official weather watcher Lori saw the rain coming, so just before it hit this morning we took one step further into Float-Aboard-Trashdom and deployed the tarps.





When Jason and I were buying these tarps at Harbor Freight, we debated about buying the Camouflage colored tarps, but knew it would be going just a bit too far, so we stuck with the color we are calling FAB Grey. FAB is known in the cruising fleet as a Float-Aboard, which is a slightly derogatory term used to describe someone who lives aboard their boat as if it was a in a trailer park with two flat tires, windows covered with Tin foil and a cheese and peperoni stained pizza box covering the broken window on the front door. A FAB may be living on a boat, but in name only, because if the boat was to ever try and move or raise the sails, bets would be placed on how quickly it either sinks or topples the mast. While our boat doesn't fit the classical definition of a FAB, I'm pretty sure that I've been referred to as a FAB once or twice behind my back while living aboard in La Paz and some of our other haunts in Mexico like San Blas, Mazatlan Old Harbor and Barra de Navidad. There is this ethos in the cruising fleet that if you are not moving, you are not cruising. Real Cruisers keep moving while failed cruisers just live on their boat in Mexico and sometimes even turn into FABs.

"Rich, not having any good tacos lately is making you bitter and causing you to lose your once positive and fertile and positive mind."

Ok, it is true that I'm currently going through a bad case of MSCW (Mexican Street Cart Withdrawals) because everything is a syndrome, condition, or disability here in the States that either requires medication, therapy, or a Government hand-out check to cure, but the truth is that for all the great and fabulous things the cruising community is, it does have a prejudice against cruisers that don't feel the need to pull anchor and change ports or anchorages every few days. It's ok to live on your boat in Mexico as long as you are moving, but decide to stay in a spot for too long or decide to make a port your home and you go from being a cool and hip cruiser to a live aboard Hobo or worse yet a FAB. For most of my life, I've always viewed other people's opinions like Arm Pits, everyone has two of them and most of them stink, well stink at least when they are sticking them in my face. It's why I don't like to offer advice to potential cruisers because as Lori has pointed out to me a few times this week; my arm pits are just as smelly!

If Living aboard was ever glamorous, the rain sure washes away the glamor pretty darn fast and our true FAB colors come peeking through. Fortunately, it didn't start raining until after I returned from dropping the kids off at the pier this morning to catch the school bus, so I wasn't wearing my trash bag rain slicker and duct tape rain hat to embarrass the kids. If you can't take joy in the little things, you will have a harder time finding joy in anything, even being a FAB.