Question from Stam:
You didn't mention it but I 'gots ta ask'. Apart from your previous homeowner life gear, Do you maintain a local storage space for excessive boat gear?

Answer from Rich:
Nope....the only junk we stored was all the house gear we couldn't bring on the boat. On the boat if we didn't need something we gave it away rather quickly to make room for other junk. I say junk, but how can I throw out my bread machine and Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer? If I could manage to work my way to the back of the locker I would have those two items with me NOW...but the problem is they are buried behind junk like my refrigerator, beds, bla bla bla. I guess if we were going to become dirt dwellers again some of that junk would be needed. But after buying a mooring here in Morro Bay life ashore is a long way away for us and who knows by that time we will be ready to retire in Mexico.

Question from Mary:
Curious as to why you would have enrolled the kids in Mexican schools right away? NOMB, but is it particular to your kids, or kids in general who are aboard abroad with parents?

Answer from Rich, without being Ok'ed by Lori, so don't blame her!
It's easy for us to look back and make better calls now, but at the time we were not planning on spending all of our cruise in Mexico, it just happened day by day as we loved it, were having a good time and didn't want to leave the land of Cheap Tacos when we heard about what was South. It's not the "common thing" for cruising kids to enroll in the local schools but rather to stay on the boat for home schooling. In some ways as crazy as living on a boat and home schooling sounds to some, it's a next level up of "crazy" to enroll them in school in a foreign country where they don't speak the language. We have two friends that did enroll their kids in the local schools in La Paz and they really enjoyed it...kids and parents. But once again what seems crazy from a distance sure looks like the thing to have done with hindsight. The kids would be fluent Spanish speakers and that trade off would have been completely worth whatever they would have missed out on educationally. I mean really, have you seen the dumbing down of the standards these days in the Public Schools, but that's another topic for another day when I'm wearing fire proof underpants from all the angry emails I will get from the Educational Indoctrination Complex.