At time I get the feeling that I'm living in an alternate universe where up is down, left is right, and hot is cold? I should have learned by now, but like most people I still get sucked into the conventional Cruise Rumors de jour. In our 3 years of cruising Mexico, we have heard it all. We were told everything from you couldn't get groceries or propane up in the Bay of Los Angeles, to the water temperature was going to be 100 degrees. The story was that La Paz was miserably hot in the summers (I'm wearing a sweatshirt this morning at 10AM). Then there was the story that you can't take your boat to Puerto Penasco because the marina dries out from the high tidal swings. You name the conventional wisdom myth or Cruise Rumor and we have heard it. It's funny that a group of people who found a way to break away from the myth of it somehow being more dangerous in Mexico than in the US would be so quick to fall into another set of myths and rumors spread by fellow cruisers. Is it because life is so good down here on a boat that we need something negative to talk about, something to worry about or something to avoid? I have no idea what gives these cruise rumors life, but once started they take on a life of their own and spread through the cruising fleet like a wild fire on the African grassland. A standard inspection by the Mexican navy (similar to ones done in the US by the Coast Guard) somehow morphs into a scary event by the 7th telling and barely resembles the actual event with the advice being given at the end of the story to not allow the Mexican Navy aboard your vessel.

Prior to casting off cruising most of us spent a significant amount of time on the various cruiser chat rooms and on-line forums. We asked for advice on everything from what boat makes a good cruising boat, to what's the best way to can butter and what do people do to ward off pirates. I still enjoy visiting such forums, but I don't participate as much because most of the people on those sites, at least the ones typically first with all the detailed "advice", frankly don't have a clue. Ask a question about a marine head repair and soon to follow will be advice to toss out your marine head and use a bucket. Ask about the visa procedure in Mexico and you will hear more rumor than fact. Ask for the best anchor of course, and you just started a Holy War.

So if there are so many Cruising Rumors out there and bogus information floating around how do you figure things out? How do you prepare and plan for a cruise and then decide where to go and what to do while out cruising if you can't trust the experts? The only real way to prepare for a cruise is to have done it. I know that sounds crazy, but only your experiences will be able to tell you concretely for YOU what you need to know. That could be you spending time aboard your boat prior to casting off or that could be your first 3 years in Mexico, like it was for us. The truth is no "How to Cruise" book or magazine or even all the good-intentioned-arm-chaired-cruisers posting in the on-line forums will be able to tell you what will work for YOU rather than what worked for them. I can tell you that we comfortably cruise now on $1000 month, but ask the same question of other cruisers and they could possibly tell you that they would be in misery on anything less than $2500 or even $3000. We could tell you that our best time cruising was during the summer up in the Northern Sea of Cortez, yet we have meet cruisers who after spending only a few weeks up there, turned around and headed back south swearing never to return (a coincidence that there are no marina's with shore power up there? perhaps). Their post about the Northern Sea on a cruiser forum would look a lot different than ours! So far the summer in La Paz has been a dream, weather and temperature wise, and we were told we would die from heat and be completely miserable when we told others of our summer home.

We have seen boats comfortably cruising Mexico that the experts would tell you were not fit for "blue water cruising", the famous catch phrase of the internet cruiser. Long essays are written about the true seaworthy vessels one must have to go cruising or you risk not just your comfort but your very lives. More potential cruisers haven't made it to Mexico because they don't have what the experts say is the right boat or the right gear than have ever suffered the fate promised to those that didn't cast off in the right "Blue Water Yacht".

Forget about the "Cruising Boat of the Year" with the 3 page photo spread in Cruising World magazine, I don't see those boats out here cruising anyway. What I do see are cruisers with boats and cruising plans that the experts say won't work and shouldn't be done. I shouldn't be anchored in the La Paz Bay at the end of July because:

A) it's hurricane season
B) I'll be dead from heat and
C) Everyone knows that the prime cruising season in the Sea of Cortez is in the winter when the water is too cold to really enjoy and every anchorage is jammed packed by people doing it right!

I remember the song lyrics "if loving you is wrong, I don't want to do right". Well if the way we are cruising is wrong, then here's another vote for not wanting to do right! Of course, I could be singing a different tune if I'm looking up from the deck of THIRD DAY and see blue sky through the eye of a hurricane! Then all the experts perhaps would have been right and my insurance company who insured us for the summer in La Paz would have been wrong.