Well I realize now that just going from my mental synapse firing order isn’t a good way to describe what and who we are. So, I introduced myself and wrote about our little Cal without going into what Papillon is or why and how we bought her.

Papillon is a Slocum 43, and she found me- I wasn’t even looking for her, nor had I even an inkling of just what an awesome boat the Slocum is.

Stan Huntingford designed her and after selling the design to Tayana (Tayana 42) and Passport (Passport 42), decided that he could commission the vessel in his original specifications, without the compromise driven by a big name house.

And I have to say- they did a good job with this one.

There I was- walking down the waterfront of Lake Union in Seattle with Kimball Anderson, who was working as my “buyer’s broker”, on our way to take a look at a Valiant 40, when we walked past Papillon. She was a little below us, bow in, and just looked tough. Kimball made a call to the broker and we found ourselves taking a tour.

Wow- we went below and within seconds, I knew this was our boat. Just everything about it spoke to me. I’ll post some pics but they just don’t do her justice.

So now we have a boat- and a dirt anchor as well- one’s got to go. We decided the adventure was worth the effort and selling the house was the plan. A lot of prep work went into the house so it was fit to market, and having such a boat, it made it easy for us to stay aboard her while the house was on the block. So here we are, having wintered over in Seattle aboard a boat, deciding that perhaps warmer climes would be better for this lifestyle. San Diego here we come! Unbelievably, we sold the house at the top of the market and closed the week before we set sail for SoCal. Timing truly is everything.

I’ll do a recap of that trip later.

So we came to San Diego with the idea that we would stay here for a season, then head south. You've heard of Odysseus and his travails in the Land of the Lotus Eaters? That's exactly what happened to us- life is good, business is good, weather is good.

What else could we want? We had forgotten just why we have compromised our comforts, why we gave up "normalcy", why we fought to achieve this goal, only to be led into complacency here in the "Land of the Lotus Eaters".

So like the guy standing at the edge of the cliff, wanting to dive, but enjoying the view too much to worry about the drop, we just needed some encouragement, some sort of deadline..............

The Baja Ha-ha serves that purpose perfectly- a deadline and a destination at the same time. I'll do a post on that later.

So there ya go, little things that add up to reaching a goal. It's always cool to have some sort of vague idea about where and what you want to do. It is translating those drifts and mists of ideas into something concrete that gives one pause.

We are getting there.